Maurice Merleau-Ponty, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The phenomenal field is what remains when you refuse to let perception be absorbed into the objects it delivers. Classical science, following the movement perception itself initiates, concluded that perception is merely a nascent science — incomplete, approximate, waiting to be superseded by methodical knowledge. But this philosophy is collapsing before our eyes.1
Nature is not in itself geometrical; it only appears so to a careful observer who limits himself to the macroscopic givens.1 What science forgets is that it inherited its ideal of knowledge from the perceived thing and then, having forgotten this origin, believed itself to be complete. The return to the phenomenal field is the return to what perception was before that forgetting.
It is the layer of living experience through which other people and things are first given to us — the system of self, others, and things in its nascent state, prior to number, measure, space, and causality, and yet given only as a perspectival view of objects gifted with stable properties.2 This is not a contradiction to be resolved but the very structure of perceptual experience: it is at once radically contingent and perspectival, and yet it accedes to things themselves, because these perspectives are articulated in a way that makes access to inter-individual significations possible.2
The phenomenal field is neither inner nor outer in the sense objective thought requires; it is the living communication with the world that makes the world present to us as the familiar place of our life.3 The body is what holds the phenomenal field open. Perception is essentially bodily not in the causal sense that the body produces experience as a mechanism produces an output, but in the sense that the phenomenal field is constituted by the sensorimotor structures and capacities of the body — the structure of perception just is the structure of the body.4
And yet the body that constitutes this field cannot itself appear within it as one object among others: I observe external objects with my body, but when it comes to my body, I never observe it itself; I would need a second body to do so, which would itself be unobservable.5 The body is therefore not the screen between me and things but the very medium through which things are given — a phenomenon, gifted with an original structure, that presents itself as an intermediary while not being one as a matter of fact.6
The fundamental philosophical act, then, is to return to this lived world beneath the objective world, to give back to the thing its concrete physiognomy and to subjectivity its historical inherence — to awaken perception and thwart the ruse by which it allowed itself to be forgotten in favor of the object it delivers.1
We will no longer say that perception is a nascent science, but rather that classical science is a perception that has forgotten its origins and believes itself to be complete... The fundamental philosophical act would thus be to return to the lived world beneath the objective world.Phenomenology of Perception, p. 57
Thus we find ourselves in the presence of a field of lived perception which is prior to number, measure, space and causality and which is nonetheless given only as a perspectival view of objects gifted with stable properties... it is also true to say that my perception accedes to things themselves, for these perspectives are articulated in a way which makes access to inter-individual significations possible.The Structure of Behavior, p. 249
menal field is the place of our 'living communication with the world that makes it present to us as the familiar place of our life.'Phenomenology of Perception, p. xl
The phenomenal field is neither caused nor defined but constituted by the sensorimotor structures and capacities of the body. The structure of perception just is the structure of the body: my body 'is my point of view upon the world.'Phenomenology of Perception, pp. xiv–xv
I observe external objects with my body, I handle them, inspect them, and walk around them. But when it comes to my body, I never observe it itself. I would need a second body to be able to do so, which would itself be unobservable.Phenomenology of Perception, pp. xiv–xv
I perceive things directly without my body forming a 'screen between them and me; it is a phenomenon just as they are, a phenomenon (gifted, it is true, with an original structure) which precisely presents the body to me as an intermediary between the world and myself although it is not as a matter of fact.The Structure of Behavior, p. 249