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Quote by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Work

Phenomenology of Perception

This book delves into the philosophical underpinnings of how humans perceive the world around them, examining the relationship between consciousness and sensory experience. more

Author

Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French philosopher renowned for his contributions to phenomenology. His seminal work, 'Phenomenology of Perception', delves into the nature of perception and the significance of the body in interpreting the world. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy underscores the centrality of experience and the importance of the lived body. more

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“After reading Burgum, [Patricia Highsmith] wrote in her cahier that, like Kafka, she felt she was a pessimist, unable to formulate a system in which an individual could believe in God, government or self. Again like Kafka, she looked into the great abyss which separated the spiritual and the material and saw the terrifying emptiness, the hollowness, at the heart of every man, a sense of alienation she felt compelled to explore in her fiction. As her next hero, she would take an architect, 'a young man whose authority is art and therefore himself,' who when he murders, 'feels no guilt or even fear when he thinks of legal retribution'. The more she read of Kafka the more she felt afraid as she came to realise, 'I am so similar to him.”

“As the new year began, [Patricia Highsmith] felt completely paralysed, incapable of reading or picking up the phone. 'I can feel my grip loosening on my self,' she wrote. 'It is like strength failing in the hand that holds me above an abyss.' She wished there was a more awful-sounding word for what she was feeling than simply 'depression'. She wanted to die, she said, but then realised that the best course of action would be to endure the wretchedness until it passed. Her wish was, 'Not to die, but not to exist, simply, until this is over'.”