Merleau-Ponty—Imaginary and vision

 

"For the imaginary is much nearer to, and much farther away from, the actual—nearer because it is in my body as a diagram of the life of the actual, with all its pulp and carnal obverse exposed to view for the first time... And the imaginary is much farther away from the actual because the painting is an analogue or likeness only according to the body; because it does not offer the mind an occasion to rethink the constitutive relations of things, but rather it offers the gaze traces of vision, from the inside, in order that it may espouse them;"

Page Number: 
P. 162
Bibliographic Reference: 
  1. M. Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and mind,” The primacy of perception (1964): 159–190.