Makes you want to race around the room and scramble up the walls like a lab mouse on stimulants. Why? Because after this blazing introduction to phenomenology, you suddenly realize that so much of the topics we typically preoccupy ourselves with are hardly even apprehended correctly by our own senses. All the ideas in our brains are based on fragments; on false impressions. It is not just that we 'glance' at things, 'half-hear' what is spoken to us; or that we only give our environments a distracted smidgen of our attention. No, not merely this --many other authors have written on such matters. Instead, Merleau-Ponty proves that even when we are gazing directly at what's before us we never truly see it. There is no 'pure thought'. The world is not Schopenhauer's idea, nor Descarte's objective, nor Sartre's subjective --but a 'phantom limb' like that which haunted the disabled soldiers Merleau-Ponty studied. It is sensory, it is 'approximation'. In the course of our daily routines, we're accustomed to skip right over skeptical hesitation which would make us pause. But this makes us fools. We should all countenance much deeper, graver mistrust of our faculties. The truth is, that we never perceive anything fully or correctly through our senses. Perception--the crux of everything--of course! The most fundamental step towards ratiocination: we fail. We can't even congratulate ourselves on handling this species-task accurately! Merleau-Ponty really shows up the rich (and false) self-conceit we possess in our own powers. How do we 'know' anything, how can we 'trust' anything ...when we can't even validate the functioning of the faculties upon which we judge the world? How can we agree/disagree between ourselves --on any topic --when each of us is wrapped in fog? The 'internal world' (versus) the 'external world'...this book reveals that neither exists in any definable mode. All such questions like, 'is this thing part of this other thing?' and 'are you seeing the same thing I am seeing?' come under scrutiny by this man Merleau-Ponty, and are definitively settled by this great thinker.
Ladies & Gentlemen: we've all been sleepwalking.
