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17 1 The Intertwining: The Recursion of the Seer and the Seen Perhaps the most difficult task for a reader of The Visible and the Invisible is to understand what Merleau-Ponty means by the “intertwining.” The brevity and scattered nature of his comments on this concept and the fact that this work remains unfinished contribute to this difficulty. Because of his untimely death, we cannot know with any certainty what the final state of this work would have been. All we have are fragments and indications . What they show is that Merleau-Ponty was working on a basic characteristic of being itself: namely, the tendency of a being to be affected or conditioned by that which it affects or conditions. The formal (mathematical ) conception of this type of self-affection (or self-conditioning) is that of recursion. After having shown how Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the intertwining grows out of his inquiry into perceptual faith—more specifically in the conditions for the possibility of its justification—I will then show how such conditions imply that being itself is recursive. Perceptual Faith As Merleau-Ponty writes, perceptual faith seems to embrace a contradiction . I assert, for example, “that I see my table, that my vision terminates in it, that [the table] holds and stops my gaze with its insurmountable density. . . . Still, as soon as I attend to it, this conviction is just as strongly contested by the very fact that this vision is mine” (VI, 4–5). “The ‘natural’ man,” he adds, “holds on to both ends of the chain, thinks at the same time, that his perception enters into the things and that it is formed this side of the body” (VI, 8). Thus, the very “experience of my flesh . . . has taught me that perception . . . emerges in the recesses of a body”—my body (VI, 9). Similarly, I put the perception that the other has “behind his body”—that is, in his head (ibid.). Yet we both claim that our perception terminates in something out there. In fact, we regard each other and the seeing we engage in as out there among the things. As embodied, we are present among them; the seer, because he has a body, is also seen. He 18 E M B O D I M E N T S is, as seen, taken to be in the world. Yet the world, as seen, is also taken to be something in him—that is, somehow “behind his body.” Thus, each of us has to say, “I am in the world and the world is in me.” This double assertion is, on a basic level, that of the intertwining of the perceiver and his world. The thought of this intertwining begins with the question: how can both assertions obtain? The reason why I can say that perception is “mine”—that is, emerges from the recesses of my body—is that I perceive in and through my body. Having a body, however, places me in the world. Thus, “my hand,” Merleau-Ponty writes, “while it is felt from within, is also accessible from without, itself tangible for my other hand.” Touched, “it takes its place among the things it touches, is in a sense one of them” (VI, 133). In other words, it is of the same order as the things it senses. The hand that is touched is in and a part of the world it touches. Yet, this tactile world is also in it. The hand that touches provides a place for the tactile to appear. The same holds for my body as such. In my bodily being— concretely, through my eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and skin—I provide the venues for the world’s appearing. As Merleau-Ponty expresses this, “because our flesh lines [tapisse] and even envelops all the visible and tangible things with which nevertheless it is surrounded, the world and I are within one another” (VI, 123). My flesh lines (or covers) the world by providing measures “for being, dimensions to which we can refer it” (VI, 103). Through flesh, I can refer to the sensible aspects of being. I can measure it along the axes or dimensions of its tastes, sounds, smells, roughness, and smoothness. My body can provide such measures because it does not sense the world as an external observer; it senses it as part of it. In Merleau-Ponty’s words, my flesh is capable of measuring the world “because my eyes which see, my hands...

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