Desiring perception treats objects as flesh that reveals one’s own body

Evidence

Traditional philosophy has no name for this ‘visibility’, says Merleau-Ponty, so he uses the word ‘flesh’, meaning something much more than a physical substance. Flesh is what we share with the world. ‘It is the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body.’ It is because I am flesh that I move and respond to things while I observe them. It is what makes me ‘follow with my eyes the movements and the contours of the things themselves’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 744 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The perceived object is always surpassed toward the self’s own possibilities; The body is revealed to us by instrumental things, not by itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 867; Seduction works by presenting one’s object-ness as a fascinating fullness of being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 951 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Flesh names the shared substance linking perceiver and perceived world. #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 744
• The desire to possess aims at unity with the object #expands (0.70)