Merleau-Ponty - The Visible and The Invisible (15)

[@absurdbeing2219]

*Contents* 00:18 Review 01:50 FLESH 02:29 Distance 04:15 Flesh as body 06:38 Body as sensible for itself and exemplar sensible (quote) 07:39 Body as sensible for itself 08:41 Body as exemplar sensible 11:14 Flesh 12:44 VISIBILITY 13:07 Two “leaves” 16:40 Visibility 22:14 Vision and touch 25:03 THE NARCISSISM IN VISION 25:18 The first meaning of the narcissism 26:35 The second meaning of the narcissism 28:54 Passivity 33:29 FLESH AS ‘ELEMENT’ 35:40 Mysticism/Spiritualism 38:05 Element 41:55 Summary

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

Thanks man! You've done a great job on this. What do you think will be next for you?

[@absurdbeing2219]

@@Haveuseenmyjetpack As you noted in your later comment, I'm not quite done yet... but, thanks! I'll take an early victory lap since you're offering one! No worries about Gurwitsch (later comment again). I know he's your man. As for my next project, I think it's going to tap a completely different audience from anyone watching this one. However, I'm going to claim producer rights and wait to announce it 'face to camera' in the last video, where I can say a bit more about it.

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

@@absurdbeing2219 looking forward to finding out what you have in mind. BTW, I cleaned up and made my comments more logical (though, as notes, they're not entirely so). May be on to something? I am thinking of the 'simulation' as allowing two basic modes of experiencing: pre-reflective and reflective consciousness; coming with a kind of 'template' we all have for what a "world" is, regardless of the particular culture one inhabits (this is the "Life-World"). Invariant formal structures all 'normal' subjects have as part of their being, like habituality, sedimentation, field of passivity, time-consciousness, the "I-can", etc.

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

@@absurdbeing2219 I appreciate Gurwitsch for his writing. Phenomenology with nothing cryptic, everything is perfectly clear. Starting with Husserl & Heidgger, then, that moment of discovering him & Alfred Schutz, is a wild experience with all sorts of conflicting feelings haha

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

@@absurdbeing2219 so many ways of thinking about the Flesh, I was thinking…what does he mean, flesh is “between the idea and the spatiotemporal thing”? Would the “Idea” be, for example, a or the “visible”, while the spatial-temporal thing is itself a or _this_ “visible”? So it’s between a visible as a thing and the visible as an idea? Not sure what the next step in this reasoning chain would be exactly. But been a long day. You think this is valid or off target? Or does the idea only come about after the sublimation of the thing? Is the visible noun/verb limited to reversibility in being-visible and a visible being?

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

Awesome, I thought you'd finished the book already! Whoops, sorry to pester you about Gurwitsch haha

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

Sorry, I'm using your youtube comment section as a notepad, hope you do not mind, haha... 3:09 This smacks of Bergson. So, MP says "The Uerprasentierbarkeit ("original presentability") *is* the flesh". Things must have proto- "presentability" to be sensible and, in order to sense them (a sentient), we must also share in this proto-presentability -- we are also sensible, body as object (body as seen, as touched, as sensible). As bergson says, there must be in things and in our bodies the capacity to be perceived, perceived-ness. That which is in common, the primal presentability, is often referred to with the word "thickness". The thickness is time, a primordial upspringing. Although the translators always use "depth", Bergson in fact used the word "épaisseur" which, correctly translated, means "thickness" and not depth. So we find, in the original French, Bergson always referring to "épaisseur de durée" or "thickness of duration", or "épaisseur indivisée de temps" or "indivisible thickness of time". And now we can bring this interpretation home by quoting Bergson who writes if we divided "this *undivided thickness* of time, to distinguish within it the desired multiplicity of moments, to eliminate all memory...[we would thereby] move _from perception to matter, from subject to object_ ." So the flesh is primordial presentability, which is itself the thickness of duration (time), which both the for-itself (conscious, subject) and in-itself (unconscious, object) are present to. We are all "corpuscle borne by a wave of Being". What does this mean? First: Schopenhauer says it is because our body as object (and subject simultaneously, sensible/sentient) shares in the the principle of sufficient reason (PSR)***(see note below), being the general form of *all* "necessary connection" which takes different forms insofar as it is applied to different classes of objects. There are different forms of "necessary connection", including intentionality, but all forms have in common _some_ "necessary connection" (Urprasentierbarkeit) which gives things their possible "presentability"..... that which allows entities, as phenomena, to come into being ("individuation" in external or internal space/time) and interact as "objects" (sensible) for a perceiving subject (sentient) also equally present to them. But the PSR must be radically re-understood, though the body which is a *prototype* of being itself. How? The body is the archetype for this, as exemplar---a model or representative of a universal condition of visibility, the body or the visible aspect of oneself as an example or model of universal visibility. When MP writes, "mon visible se confirme comme exemplaire d'une universelle visibilite," ("my visible [experience] is confirmed as an exemplar of universal visibility") he implies that the visibility of my body (and by extension, my experience) serves as a representative instance of a broader, universal phenomenon of visibility, as "the concrete emblem of a *general manner* of being"; even the intersection between sensory experience and thought. The "exemplaire" here is pointing to how our embodied experience (the "visible") becomes a model or a basis for understanding universal concepts, idea, spirit. At the very heart of Schopenhauer's "World as [re]presentation" (phenomenal being, present-ability, flesh), we find (at every level) an inherent conflict between expansion and contraction and "... between attractive and repulsive forces....[a] constant pressure and resistance [which] may be regarded as *the objectivity of will* in its *very lowest* grade, and *even there it [the Will] expresses* its character." This thickness of duration, this flesh as original-presentability, with it's forms of necessary connections which, as subjects, we all share in common -- as the condition of the possibility of being in the world at all -- is perhaps something like "existence", properly understood as time. And Bergson agrees, "But here we come to the capital problem of *_existence_* ... with regard to matters of experience ... existence appears to imply two conditions taken together : (i) presentation in consciousness and (2) the logical or causal connexion *_, of *that which_*_ is so presented, with what _precedes and with what follows_. The reality for us of a psychical state (mind) or of a material object (matter) consists in the __*_double fact_* that our consciousness perceives them and that they form part of a series, temporal or spatial, of which the elements determine each other." (necessary conditions for phenomena to be in the world as presentation/presenting). You seeing any coherent connections here AB? I'm reaching out here, and it feels like the answer, at least a partial picture, is nearly within my grasp ie forming a coherent system between these 3 philosophers (plus husserl) and describing the world as a kind of "simulation". A note for later: I think there is a link between MP's language in this section and Bergson's concept of the things we perceive (world as rep) being its virtual action of things, after the real objects are filtered out by our real bodies....as MP says things are more than their being-perceived and this is Bergson's meaning in chapter I of M&M). ***note below: the PSR defined generally as: "for everything that happens there is a reason why it happens" is akin to Husserl's intentionality, in which "all willing is willing of something" etc., which, in fact, *Schopenhauer* first wrote in one of his essays, "insofar as man wills, he always wills something", and, of course, as philosophy goes, Husserl had read *only* Schopenhauer at that time (Logical Investigations), though he credited the more _respectable_ Franz Brentano as his inspiration (intentionality was, in fact, conceived by Husserl as a kind of willing, or a "tension-toward"). There's a book on Husserl's life, which I can cite upon request :)

[@absurdbeing2219]

No worries about turning my comments section into a notepad. This is the perfect place to brainstorm! One connecting thread that stands out to me is the fact that we are in the world, a sensible thing among other sensible things. Obviously key in MP, but you've highlighted this sentiment as it appears in Bergson: "there must be in things and in our bodies the capacity to be perceived" and in Schopenhauer: "body as object (and subject simultaneously, sensible/sentient)". Are you also drawing a link between flesh, PSR, and duration? That makes sense. They all function to ground perception or as the appearing of objects. Maybe this is only my own prejudices speaking, but it seems to me the trick here may lie in bridging the different domains or adapting the ideas so they work in the same domain. Flesh is ontological. Duration is metaphysical. The PSR is what? A principle? Your idea of re-interpreting this latter through the body seems on point to me. I think I’m less clear on the _equating_ of flesh and duration. I see what you're saying about the thickness of duration, but I can’t quite see my way to identifying this with the thickness of flesh. I understand time in Bergson as being _thick_ in the way that it ‘gathers’ a series of events into a (thick) whole, that therefore endures. Time is, thus, a process enacted upon an original (atemporal) series of (thin) events. Dividing this thickness of time into a multiplicity of moments gives you matter, but not the appearing of objects. For MP, objects become visible on the invisible background of flesh, but for Bergson, objects appear only once the process of duration is carried out. There is obviously a connection, but I’m struggling to see it as one of identify. Re: existence. In Schopenhauer, the attractive and repulsive forces belong to the Will, right? In Bergson, we see exactly the same thing (tension and relaxation) in relation to his _elan vital._ Is this a more natural fit than existence “with regard to matters of *experience”* in Bergson. Interesting final paragraph about Husserl, Schopenhauer, intention, and willing. I wasn’t aware of that. You’d better give me the title of that biography, I assume, on Husserl. Nice to step back from the philosophical weeds every once in a while and read about the philosophers themselves.

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

@@absurdbeing2219 the book is The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl by Dorion Cairns

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

FYI - "Urepräsentierbarkeit" does not mean un-presentability. Rather, it means "primordial presentable-ness" or "original presentability". "Ur-", indicates something that is foundational or exists in its earliest form ("proto"). For example, in German, "Urteil" means "judgment" but can also be broken down into "Ur-" (original) and "Teil" (part), which in its roots could be understood as an "original division" or "primal decision". Another example is "Urzeit" which refers to prehistoric times, literally meaning "original time." For Husserl, "Ur-" emphasizes the a primal or fundamental nature, often pointing to _the most basic or original form of something in experience or being_ It could, _somewhat_ humorlessly be thought of as: *"Primordial-Pre-Sense-ify-able-ness"* or *"Proto-Pre-Percept-ize-ability-ness"* meaning: *"The state of **_being able to be made perceptible_** in a primordial or original way before anything else."*

[@absurdbeing2219]

Oh, right. That does make sense. I guess the uer- prefix is just an alternative spelling of ur- then. Disappointing to discover that _after_ I made the video. Still, I think my interpretation of flesh still holds up despite that mis-translation. It just no longer clarifies my point that the flesh is not the body as a lump of matter anymore, which was the only reason I included it in the first place.

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

@@absurdbeing2219 I think you're on target still.

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

@@absurdbeing2219 Uer- is a misspelling