Maurice Melo-Ponty was deeply influenced by Husserl's concept of "life world". The concept of "life world" claims that the world we describe with language, scientific laws and rational analysis is a world of inner consciousness and reflection, rather than the world itself that we initially perceived. Maurice Melo-Ponty transformed the concept of "life world" into "perceptual world". Before we use reason to reflect and describe the world, the world actually appeared there-it is the simplest, most primitive and most directly related to human perception.
For example, when I touch a piece of cloth with my hand, I will immediately have a feeling that is indescribable, absolutely true and full of consciousness. But when I compare this feeling with the feeling of touching other fabrics, when I describe this feeling in words in my mind, that feeling has been transformed by our consciousness and given a prescriptive and descriptive nature-it is no longer the original true and full perception, but is abstracted into a nearly monotonous concept. Maurice Melo-Ponty believes that perception precedes consciousness, and perceptual matter is not the object of consciousness, but the original presentation of the body subject by foreign objects when the body subject is in contact with foreign objects. Perception precedes conscious reflection. Maurice Melo-Ponty believes that the world with various regulations studied by traditional rationalists and empiricists in the past has undergone conscious reflection. Reflection is not re-presentation, but active transformation-the world people reflect on is not the original world. What kind of dilemma will this reflection bring to philosophy? Does this world already exist, or do we imagine it ourselves? This is the opposition between realism and idealism. In the eyes of Maurice Melo-Ponty, the world disputed by the two theorists is not the original world experienced in life at all, but the world that has been reflected and stipulated, and its authenticity is doubtful. In front of the most real world, all philosophers have to keep silent.
That world is a world of perception. The perceptual world is presented to us almost instantly in an epiphany way. The human body is deeply rooted in the world and "meets" and talks with foreign objects-this is human life. Since the body is the main body, life is also perceived by people. Although the sources of perception are various, they are all unconditionally perceived at first, without being tested by human consciousness or before consciousness. All these perceptions merge into a big environment, a big background, that is, the "perceived world". The perceptual world is a transcendental human structural life, not a pure entity. The so-called structurality means that the perceptual world already contains all the factual forms in life, but this structurality is vague, harmonious and indescribable, and it is the ultimate source of the stipulation and describability of all kinds of things in the ideological world. This transcendental structure is based on the structure of nature. At the same time, people's spiritual subjectivity-including people's perception of others and the whole cultural world (which should be cultural subconscious)-is integrated into nature, making the perceptual world the background and environment of people's conscious activities. "The perceptual world is always the first foundation of all rationality, value and existence (the concrete existence described)." Before we make a precise distinction with concepts and explain their meanings, meaning already exists in the perceptual world.
Therefore, the perceptual world is not a simple external environment, but the result of the interaction between human factors (including physiological and cultural factors) and external factors. Therefore, the perceptual world is not purely created by people, nor is it purely endowed by the outside world, but a dialogue between people and external things. Here, people and the world are open to each other and communicate in all directions, and the content of communication is recorded in the perceptual world. Just like two scholars sitting down to talk, if scholar A takes a notebook with him, he can record the conversation at any time (symbolizing people's perceptual ability), while scholar B has no intention of recording (symbolizing things without perceptual ability), but scholar A will not only record his own views, nor will he only record the words of the other side, but record the interaction, confrontation and consensus between the two sides. The status of two scholars is equal, and there is no distinction between subject and object. The perceptual world is like a notebook record. It is not a unilateral record of people or foreign things, but a bilateral process of equal communication between people and foreign things-that is, the existence of people in the world. Therefore, in the perceptual world, the opposition between subject and object does not exist.
Maurice Melo-Ponty used the "incarnation" of the world to illustrate the communication between foreign objects and people-people are the premise of perceiving the world, but in perceiving the world, people can not only perceive their own physical and mental conditions, but also perceive the situation of foreign objects, just like foreign objects are included in my body, and my body extends to the outside world. However, just as the perception of the left hand needs the touch of the right hand, the perception of foreign objects also needs human touch. The perception of the left hand touching the right hand comes from both sides, and the perception of human contact with the world also comes from both sides.
The above is the explanation of the relationship between people and things. Maurice Melo-Ponty also explained the relationship between people, which is equivalent to Husserl's "intersubjectivity". As I said before, the relationship between man and the world is not closed opposition, but open communication, and so is the relationship between people. For example, both scholars brought notebooks. While recording the conversation, they also exchanged notes and exchanged views on the conversation. No one's perception is absolutely independent. Individuals can stand in the perspective of others, and people's roles are interchangeable. This "reversibility" between self and others shows that meaning, truth and value are diverse and can be exchanged, transformed and integrated, which makes political dialogue and wider social interaction possible.
Maurice Melo-Ponty also talked about the reversibility of language and thought. Traditional dualism holds that thought is the core and content, and language is the shell and form. Language often can't express ideas properly, which leads to the separation of thought and language. Maurice Melo-Ponty believes that thinking and language are two aspects of conscious activity, and their essence is unified. He distinguished between "used words" and "words in use". When people first invented a word, they fixed their thoughts on that word and passed it down to become a "used word" with a fixed meaning. At the moment when writing was invented, thought and language were the same. Later generations will encounter similar but different life situations if they use that word again. In this way, "used words" became "words in use", which was injected with new ideological connotation by later generations, which was different from the previous meaning of the word, but still consistent with the new ideas when it was reused. In the poet's body, the connotation of this word is updated in a very flexible way ... In this way, "used words" and "words in use" are transformed into each other, which actually records the course of human consciousness and shows the continuous renewal of human thought.
In his later works, Maurice Melo-Ponty called the world revealed by language and thinking "visible world", while the source of perceptual world was "invisible world". The "invisible world" is actually the "existence" of people in the world. Being is not an entity, but a structural field that precedes consciousness. This structure is a transcendental form of "dialogue" between man and the world. Existence is a living language structure, the source and context of language expression and thinking activities, and the visible world is the ultimate noumenon behind the relationship between man and the world. Compared with Kant's unconscious ontology of "thing itself", "being" ontology is perceptual, but it is as indescribable and invisible as "thing itself". Moreover, if "thing itself" has nothing to do with human existence, then "existence" is closely related to human beings, and the structure in which foreign things coexist with human beings is not pure "thing itself".
The invisibility of the existence structure shows that it is impossible for people to know the pure external world. Man's knowledge is actually an "intervention" in the world, which is essentially to transform the world. The uncertainty principle of particles in quantum physics is a powerful example.
There is also reversibility between the "visible" and "invisible" worlds. The "invisible" factors are reflected by consciousness and transformed into "visible" experiences and meanings. The "visible" experience and meaning will lead to the continuous renewal of new concepts about the world, that is, concepts and meanings, and then open up new practical fields for people's future-in this way, the "visible" experience and meaning will complete the transformation to the "existence" field of invisible people. Maurice Melo-Ponty advocates the direct expression of "existence" in art, believing that it is not limited to formal stipulations, but expresses an original structure of the world that precedes reflection. Accordingly, Maurice Melo-Ponty criticized the existing operational research. He thinks that operational research only knows the "visible world", but ignores the reversible transformation with the most real "invisible world"-that is, it only pays attention to the prescribed experience and ignores the practice and creation of initiative.
Maurice Melo-Ponty's extensive use of "reversibility" reflects the "fuzziness" of his philosophy-the fuzziness of binary opposition. He wants to make it clear that there is only one kind of matrix in the world, including people, which is what he calls "body". "Body" is the only element of "being" structure, and there is no distinction between subject and object. In other words, all binary opposites in the material world-body-consciousness, subject-object, self-world, thought-language ... are vague and temporary. In fact, Maurice Melo-Ponty found a monism about existence by the principle of "perceptual first" through the perceptual world.