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Being Established In My Life, Buttressed By My Thinking Nature, Fastened Down In This Transcendental Field Which Was Opened For Me By My First Perception, And In Which All Absence Is Merely The Obverse Of A Presence, All Silence A Modality Of The Being Of Sound, I Enjoy A Sort Of Ubiquity And Theoretical Eternity, I Feel Destined To Move In A Flow Of Endless Life, Neither The Beginning Nor The End Of Which I Can Experience In Thought, Since It Is My Living Self Who Think Of Them, And Since Thus My Life Always Precedes And Survives Itself.

-Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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Being Established In My

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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Being Established In My Life, Buttressed By My Thinking Nature, Fastened Down In This Transcendental Field Which Was Opened For Me By My First Perception, And In Which All Absence Is Merely The Obverse Of A Presence, All Silence A Modality Of The Being Of Sound, I Enjoy A Sort Of Ubiquity And Theoretical Eternity, I Feel Destined To Move In A Flow Of Endless Life, Neither The Beginning Nor The End Of Which I Can Experience In Thought, Since It Is My Living Self Who Think Of Them, And Since Thus My Life Always Precedes And Survives Itself.

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All Thought Of Something Is At The Same Time Self-consciousness [...] At The Root Of All Our Experiences And All Our Reflections, We Find [...] A Being Which Immediately Recognises Itself, [...] And Which Knows Its Own Existence, Not By Observation And As A Given Fact, Nor By Inference From Any Idea Of Itself, But Through Direct Contact With That Existence. Self-consciousness Is The Very Being Of Mind In Action.

Thinking Which Displaces, Or Otherwise Defines, The Sacred Has Been Called Atheistic, And That Philosophy Which Does Not Place It Here Or There, Like A Thing, But At The Joining Of Things And Words, Will Always Be Exposed To This Reproach Without Ever Being Touched By It.

Montaigne [puts] Not Self-satisfied Understanding But A Consciousness Astonished At Itself At The Core Of Human Existence.

Even Those Who Have Desired To Work Out A Completely Positive Philosophy Have Been Philosophers Only To The Extent That, At The Same Time, They Have Refused The Right To Install Themselves In Absolute Knowledge. They Taught Not This Knowledge, But Its Becoming In Us, Not The Absolute But, At Most, Our Absolute Relation To It, As Kierkegaard Said. What Makes A Philosopher Is The Movement Which Leads Back Without Ceasing From Knowledge To Ignorance, From Ignorance To Knowledge, And A Kind Of Rest In This Movement.

Speech Is Not A Means In The Service Of An External End. It Contains Its Own Rule Of Usage, Ethics, And View Of The World, As A Gesture Sometimes Bears The Whole Truth About A Man.

As A Matter Of Principle, Humanity Is Precarious: Each Person Can Only Believe What He Recognizes To Be True Internally And, At The Same Time, Nobody Thinks Or Makes Up His Mind Without Already Being Caught Up In Certain Relationships With Others, Which Leads Him To Opt For A Particular Set Of Opinions.

To Ask For An Explanation Is To Explain The Obscure By The More Obscure.

Lichtenberg ... Held Something Of The Following Kind: One Should Neither Affirm The Existence Of God Nor Deny It. ... It Is Not That He Wished To Leave Certain Perspectives Open, Nor To Please Everyone. It Is Rather That He Was Identifying Himself, For His Part, With A Consciousness Of Self, Of The World, And Of Others That Was "strange" (the Word Is His) In A Sense Which Is Equally Well Destroyed By The Rival Explanations.

The Body Is To Be Compared, Not To A Physical Object, But Rather To A Work Of Art.

We Must Therefore Rediscover, After The Natural World, The Social World, Not As An Object Or Sum Of Objects, But As A Permanent Field Or Dimension Of Existence.

The World Is... The Natural Setting Of, And Field For, All My Thoughts And All My Explicit Perceptions.

To Understand Is To Experience Harmony Between What We Aim At And What Is Given, Between The Intention And The Performance - And The Body Is Our Anchorage In The World.

The Flesh Is At The Heart Of The World.

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The Photograph Keeps Open The Instants Which The Onrush Of Time Closes Up Forthwith; It Destroys The Overtaking, The Overlapping, The Metamorphosis Of Time.

The Perceived World Is The Always-presupposed Foundation Of All Rationality, All Value, And All Existence.

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