Monday, October 09, 2006

I bet phenomenologists make fabulous lovers

"This is what we are doing when we define sensation as co-existence or communion. The sensation of blue is not the knowledge or positing of a certain identifiable quale throughout all the experiences of it which I have, as the geometer's circle is the same in Paris and Tokyo... Sensation is intentional because I find that in the sensible a certain rhythm of existence is put forward... Thus a sensible datum which is on the point of being felt sets a kind of muddled problem for my body to solve. I must find the attitude which will provide it with the means of becoming determinate, of showing up as blue; I must find the reply to a question which is obscurely expressed... As I contemplate the blue of the sky I am not set over against it as an acosmic subject; I do not possess it in thought, or spread out towards it some idea of blue such as might reveal the secret of it, I abandon myself to it and plunge into this mystery, it 'thinks itself wtithin me,' I am the sky itself as it is drawn together and unified, and as it begins to exist for itself; my consciousness is saturated with this limitless blue."  --Merleau-Ponty