Home > Author > Maurice Merleau-Ponty >

" In human existence, then, there is a principle of indetermination, and this indetermination does not merely exist for us, it does not result from some imperfection in our knowledge, and we must not hold that a God might sound out our hearts and minds and determine what comes from nature and what comes from freedom. Existence is indeterminate in itself because of its fundamental structure: insofar as existence is the very operation by which something that had no sense takes on sense, by which something that only had a sexual sense adopts a more general signification, by which chance is transformed into reason, or in other words insofar as existence is the taking up of a de facto situation...Existence has no fortuitous attributes and no content that does not contribute to giving it its form, it does not admit any pure facts in themselves, because it is the movement by which facts are taken up. "

Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Phenomenology of Perception


Image for Quotes

Maurice Merleau-Ponty quote : In human existence, then, there is a principle of indetermination, and this indetermination does not merely exist for us, it does not result from some imperfection in our knowledge, and we must not hold that a God might sound out our hearts and minds and determine what comes from nature and what comes from freedom. Existence is indeterminate in itself because of its fundamental structure: insofar as existence is the very operation by which something that had no sense takes on sense, by which something that only had a sexual sense adopts a more general signification, by which chance is transformed into reason, or in other words insofar as existence is the taking up of a de facto situation...Existence has no fortuitous attributes and no content that does not contribute to giving it its form, it does not admit any pure facts in themselves, because it is the movement by which facts are taken up.