flesh

is not matter in the sense of corpuscles of being which would add up or continue on one another to form beings. . . . To designate it we should need the old term element in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is in the sense of a general thing.

. . . Vision is a palpation with the look' (VI 177/134). In the Phenomenology of Perception, the tactile is concentrated into manual activity, into the hand that feels and does, agile, prehensile, busy with the world. But in The Visible and the Invisible, another concept, one frequently discussed, that of the flesh, emerges:The flesh is not matter in the sense of corpuscles of being which would add up or continue on one another to form beings. . . . To designate it we should need the old term element in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is in the sense of a general thing. (VI 183/139) Neither a spatiotemporal individual nor an idea, flesh is something between the two. Just as the one hand touching the other suggests the reversiblity of sensation, so too the world is not only touched by us but, as flesh, touches and loops around us. (in evans and lawlor merleau ponty 'flesh')

is the name for the primordiality which simultaneously gives rise to both the perceiver and perceived.

is the sole reason why oil painting was invented.

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

is but grass, and all its goodness is as the flower of the field.

All flesh is grass, and all the goodness thereof is as the flower of the field.

is so frail it is hardly more than a dream

What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream

is a term used to describe a kinship between the sensing body and sensed things that makes their communication possible; a “general thing" between the individual and the idea.

Chiasm is therefore a crisscrossing or a bi-directional becoming or exchange between the body and things that justifies speaking of a “flesh" of things, a kinship between the sensing body and sensed things that makes their communication possible. Flesh in this sense is a “general thing" between the individual and the idea that does not correspond to any traditional philosophical concept, but is closest to the notion of an “element" in the classical sense (V&I: 184/139). Merleau-Ponty denies that this is a subjective or anthropocentric projection carnal being, as a being of depths, of several leaves or several faces, a being in latency, and a presentation of a certain absence, is a prototype of Being, of which our body, the sensible sentient, is a very remarkable variant, but whose constitutive paradox already lies in every visible. (V&I: 179/136)

flesh, n.All

flesh