What does it mean to see this painting?
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) was one of the greatest figures of post-war French philosophy, identified as a phenomenologist (the study of phenomena as they appear in the field of consciousness).
Merleau-Ponty is famous for the importance he gives to the body in shaping our experience of the world. He argued that our bodily existence is fundamental to how we perceive, think, and interact with the world.
He also famously introduced the concept of “chiasm” or “intertwining” to describe the relationship between the perceiver and the perceived, arguing that they are entangled and cannot be understood in isolation.
I will first briefly present his life and work from a biobliographical perspective, and then progressively show how he referenced a famous painting, Paul Cézanne’s Mount Sainte-Victoire, to question a very important and everyday question: what does “seeing” mean?
The Life and Work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, France, on March 14, 1908. He showed an early aptitude for philosophy and continued his education at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris before being accepted at the École Normale Supérieure.
During his time at the École Normale Supérieure, he formed a famous friendship with Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980). Their friendship would lead to the co-founding of the journal Les Temps modernes, long considered the leading French philosophical journal on political issues.
Merleau-Ponty’s academic career began after he received his degree in philosophy in 1930. He taught at various high schools before securing a position at the University of Lyon in 1945. His growing reputation led to his appointment at the Sorbonne University and then at the Collège de France in 1952.
His work is associated with phenomenology, a philosophical approach that emphasizes the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from a first-person point of view.
His major contributions include The Structure of Behavior (1942) and, his doctoral dissertation, Phenomenology of Perception (1945). He was also the author of books related to political philosophy, such as Humanism and Terror (1947).
Merleau-Ponty, who was a thorough reader and commentator on the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650), died of cardiac arrest on the evening of May 3, 1961, at the age of fifty-three, while sitting at his desk with Descartes’ Dioptriquestill open.
He left behind a considerable body of unfinished work, manuscripts and notes, in particular a book he had been working on that would become his masterpiece: The Visible and the Invisible (1964).
His last completed work was Eye and Mind, a book that had, and continues to have, a considerable influence in emphasizing the philosophical significance of art. The book was published posthumously in 1960.