We must, however, be more specific about the opposition between the world of science and the world of everyday perception. The reason why Husserl and Merleau-Ponty want us to return to the world of lived perception, or rather to this perception-as-a-world, is so that we may become awa.re of it. This awareness, in tum, will radically transform our very perception of the world, since it will no longer be a perception of distinct objects, but perception of the world as a world, and, especially for Merleau
Ponty, perception of the uni()' of the world and of perception. In their view, philosophy is nothing other than this process by means of which we try "to relearn to see the world." 9
In a sense, one might say that the world of science and the world of philosophy are both, in their own way, opposed to the world of habitual perception. In the case of science, this opposition takes the form of the elimination of perception. Science discloses to us a universe reduced, by both mathematical and technological means, to its quantitative aspects. Philosophy, for its part, deepens and transforms h:\_bitual perception, forcing us to become aware of the very fact the we are perceiving the world, and that the world is that which we perceive.
We fine.I n Himilar di11tinction between habitual and philosophical perception in the wri1 inl(N of UcrgKon He describes this difference as follows:10
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Life requires that we put on blinkers; we must not look to the right, to the left, or behind, but straight ahead, in the direction in which we are supposed to walk. In order to live, we must be selective in our knowledge and our memories, and retain only that which may contribute to our action upon things.
Bergson continues: "We could say the same thing about perception. As an auxiliary of action, it isolates, out of the totality of the real, that which interests us." Some people, however, are born detached: artists.
When they look at a thing, they see itfor itselJ, and no longer for lhem. They no longer perceive merely for the sake of action: they perceive for the sake of perceiving; that is, for no reason, for the pure pleasure of it . . .
That which nature does once in a long while, out of distraction, for a few privileged people; might not philosophy . . . attempt the same thing, in another sense and in another way, for everybody? Might not the role of philosophy be to bring us to a more complete perception of reality, by means of a kind of displacement of our attention?
The "displacement of attention" of which Bergson speaks, as in the case of Merleau-Ponty's "phenomenological reduction," is in fact a conversion: 1 1 a radical rupture with regard to the state of unconsciousness in which man normally lives. The utilitarian perception we have of the world, in everyday life, in fact hides from us the world qua world. Aesthetic and philosophical perceptions of the world are only possible by means of a complete transformation of our relationship to the world: we have to perceive it for itself, and no longer for ourselves.
3 Aesthetic Perception
Bergson and, as we shall see later, Merleau-Ponty consider the aesthetic perception of the world as a kind of model for philosophical percep,tion. In fact, as J. Ritter has pointed out,12 it is only with the flourishing of modem science, from the eighteenth century on, and the transformation of the philosopher's relationship to nature which came about as a result, that we find an awareness of the necessity of an "aesthetic" mode of perception, in order to allow existence - man's Dasein - to maintain the cosmic dimension essential to human existence. As early as 1 750, Baumgarten,u in his Aeslhetica, had opposed veritas /ogica to verilas aesthetica1•: veritas /ogica was, for example, the knowledge of an eclipse appropriate to an astronomer, while aesthetic truth might be, for example, a shepherd's emotional perception of the same phenomenon, 1111 he dcKcribcs it tu his hclovcd . In hiH C:riti1111e njJ111lxemt111 of
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1 790, Kant also opposed aesthetic perception to scientific knowledge. In order to perceive the ocean as sublime, writes Kant, it is not necessary to associate with it all sorts of geographical or meteorological knowledge while we look at it. Rather: "one must come to see the ocean, all by itself - just as the poets do, exclusively according to what it displays to the eye, when it is contemplated either at rest, in the form of a limpid mirror of water, or when it is violently stirred, like an abyss threatening to swallow up everything." 15 When, between 1 8 1 5 and 1 830, C.G. Carus wrote his Lettres sur la peinture de paysage,16 he characterized landscape-painting as the "art of the representation of the life of the earth [Erdlebenbildkunst]." For Carus, it is thanks to aesthetic perception that we may continue to live in that perceptive, lived relationship with the earth, which constitutes an essential dimension of human existence.
Thus, a disinterested, aesthetic perception of the world can allow us to imagine what cosmic consciousness might signify for modern man. Modern artists, reflecting on their art, regard it as inseparable from a completely characteristic experience of the world.
In the first place, the modern artist consciously participates in cosmic life as he creates. "The dialogue with nature," writes Paul Klee, 17 "remains for the artist the condition sine qua non. The artist is a man. He is himself nature, a part of nature within the domain of nature." This dialogue with nature presupposes an intense communication with the world, carried out not merely through visual channels: "Today, the artist is better and more subtle than a camera . . . he is a creature upon earth and a creature within the universe; a creature on one star among the other stars." This is why there are, according to Klee, means other than visual for establishing the relationship between the self and its object. There is the fact that we plunge our roots into the same soil, and that we share a common participation in the cosmos. This means that the artist must paint in a state in which he feels his unity with the earth and with the universe.
For Klee, then, abstract art appears as a kind of prolongation of the work of nature:
[The artist's] progress in the observation and vision of nature gradually lets him accede to a philosophical vision of the universe which allows him freely to create abstract forms . . . Thus, the artist creates works of art, or participates in the creation of works, which are an image of the creative work of God . . . Just as children imitate us while playing, so we, in the game of art, imitate the forces which created, and continue to create, the world . . . Natura naturans is more important to the painter than ttaturti ttaturata. 18
We rc-enl·ountcr this cosmic consciousness in Cezanne. 19 "Have you seen thnt l(il{1mtk Tintorclto in Venice," he writes,
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in which the earth and the sea, the terraqueous globe, are hanging above people's heads? The horizon is moving off into the distance; the depth, the ocean distances, and bodies are taking flight, an immense rotundity, a mappamundi; the planet is hurled, falling and rolling in mid-ether! . . . He was prophesying for us. He already had the same cosmic obsession which is consuming us now . . . . As for me, I want to lose myself in nature, to grow again with her, like her . . . . In a patch of green, my whole brain will flow along with the flowing sap of the trees . . . . The immensity, the torrent of the world, in a tiny thumb's worth of matter.