Abstract

In his last work, The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty explored the fact that we believe that perception occurs in our heads and, hence, assert that the perceptual world is in us, while also believing that we are in the world we perceive. In this article, I examine how this intertwining of self and world justifies the faith we have in perception. I shall do so by considering a number of examples. In each case, the object in itself will turn out to be neither within us nor outside of us, but rather at the intersection set by the intertwining. I will then turn to what this disclosure of this object reveals about human temporality and, indeed, about human being as a place that permits disclosure