Flesh names the shared substance linking perceiver and perceived world.
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
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines ‘flesh’ as Merleau-Ponty’s term for what consciousness shares with the world — a key concept for orientation.
- XREF: Contrasts with Sartre’s subject-object dualism and connects to the embodied intentionality theme. — connects to: The body is constituted as the totality of its meaningful relations to the world; Desiring perception treats objects as flesh that reveals one’s own body; Perception requires shared substance between perceiver and perceived. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 743 (+1 more)