Skip to content

Question on Merleau-Ponty Eye and Mind

In order to make the literature more accessable, we have formulated a few questions that will (hopefully) help you in reading an understanding the text. We have numbered all the paragraphs of the two chapters of Merleau-Ponty's work for easy reference (since there is no cannonical edition) – we suggest you do the same. If you have done this correctly, chapter 1 will have 6 paragraphs, and chapter 2 21. In the questions below, we reference each paragraph by chapter-number followed by paragraph number, so e.g. 1.3 refers to the third paragraph of the first chapter, the paragraph that starts with Whence all sorts of vagabond endeavors.

1.3: "Thinking 'operationally' has become a sort of absolute artificialism, such as we see in the ideology of cybernetics'. Operationally is, of course, also the work of a surgeon.

  • Why do you think MP is specificaly talking about cybernetics as an ideology that is fundamentally 'operational'?

  • If you have watched the presentation on Benjamin, can you relate this to his analyses of a film-maker? In what way is a cybernetic 'operation' comparable to that of a film-maker?

1.4: "Scientific thinking [...] must return to the 'there is' which precedes it.

  • What does MP mean by this statement?

  • Why do you think scientific thinking must return to this kind of thinking? Do you agree with this idea?

1.6: Policital regimes which denounce 'degenerate' paintings rarely destroy these paintings.

  • Can you image what regime MP is especially thinking about?

  • Is it true that those paintings were rarely destroyed? How does this differ from current iconoclasm that occurs as a result of the contemporary political views?

  • (almost at the end) [The painter] gives himself entirely to drawing from the world [...] canvases which will hardly add to the angers or hopes of humanity. In the French original, the verb is tirer, which does not have the ambiguity that drawing perhaps has: it is more drawing something out of something else. Can you elaborate on why this is relevant in this case? Is it indeed the case that those canvases will hardly add to the angers and hopes of humanity?

2.1: We cannot imagine how a mind could paint.. MP wrote in 1964, which was at the height of the Macey Conferences on cybernetics, but long before the emergence of computer generated art. Nowadays, we have several machines that are quite capable of making drawings, music, or even poetry. If you think back on the Turing test, how does contemporary technology relate to this statement of MP?

2.6: The initial paradox [...]. What paradox is meant here?

2.7: In this paragraph, MP is stating that humanity is tightly linked with the capability of the human body to perceive itself. What do you think of this statement?

2.9: [...] their manifest visibility must be repeated in the body by a secret visibility. MP clearly diffentiates between two types of visibility. Can you elaborate on what those two are?

2.11: The word 'image' is in bad repute because we have thoughtlessly believed that a drawing was a tracing, a copy, a second thing [...].

  • who is MP referring to, when he talks about the 'we' that have believed that?

  • did 'we' really believed this thoughtlessly?

  • why is the conclusion warrented that because it is a second thing, it therefore assumes a bad reputation?

2.12: [The eyes] are the computers of the world. In the French original, the word used is computeurs, but in the Dutch translation that was published a few years ago, this word has been translated as meedenkers, which in turn you could translate as co-thinkers. If you think about the time in which this text was written, why do you think this change is relevant?

In the remainder of this paragraph, MP is working on the thesis that the painter paints a painting because he found the world lacking this painting; and, the other way around, as the painting wanting certain colors, etc. If you think back on our discussion of 'wanting' during the session, can you elaborate on this 'wanting' and 'lacking'?

2.16 idios kosmos and koinos kosmos: what is meant with these terms and the role they play in vision?

2.19: Here, MP is talking about the forest watching the painter instead of the other way around.

  • Can you relate to this feeling?

  • How does this relate to Michelangelo's statement about liberating the angel out of the marble?

2.21: Every technique is a 'technique of the body'. Can you elaborate on this statement? Can you perhaps relate this to the central thesis put forth by Marshall McLuhan?

In the same paragraph, MP is working on the thesis that once you see someone smoking a pipe, you start to feel its heat in your very (physical) fingers. How does this relate to the concept of immergence? Do you know of contemporary (and perhaps more mundane) examples that make extensive use of this phenomenon? Perhaps you can even think of a neurological basis of it...