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These lectures are incredible! Thank you. Incredible. Such a good job. I'm very impressed!

I've listened to all of Rick Roderick's philosophy lectures on YT, all Michael Sugrue's, and all Stephen West's. Abstractions (and esp neologisms) are still tough to digest ... but, alas, it could be no other way when discussing philosophical theories.

noetic (formal) structure: intentional experiences into two: 1) noetic: reele (not real) - natural standpoint. reele instead relates to pure consciousness. experience itself as the object (rather than the content). meaning-bestowing aspect. examples: directing of the glance, steady glance of an object while shifting to other, relating (these bestow meaning) 2) noema, the meaning itself, the intentional correlate. the perceived as such. immanent within experience of perception. the meaning that the meaning bestowing gives to the experience. example - noesis - see the tree, perceive the tree, expect the tree, imagine the tree (giving meaning), meaning correlate (noema) is the tree. those different modes change the experience fundamentally (even though the meaning is the same). way seen perceive has a unique noetic flavour. not real (not a part of the natural world, pure consciousness here. apple tree - natural standpoint - pleasure exists psychical state. implement epoche. bracket it out (not perma deny or doubt). the residuum is the relation between perception and the perceived. change of signature now, looking at the experience itself outside of metaphysical issues. tree in nature is different from tree under noema (because tree in nature can burn away chemically) because tree noema not made up of chemical components).

fantastic content :) so informative and approchable :)

these videos are extremely helpful in preparing for my exams this semester. Thank you for these videos!

General structures of pure consciousness pt 2: Time: Three different kinds of time. 1) objective time of natural world (scientific). Measured. Third person. 2) phenomological time - belongs to every experience. Essential part of experience itself and how it unfolds. Cannot be measured because only lived. Time of duration (temporal sense it unfolds). Live through it. 3) time-consciousness: cast gaze away from phenomological timr and look at how time id given in tje first place. Jow temporality is presented. Separate experiences endures/connect to each other. Continuum of durations. Background continuum in which phenomological time appears. Linked to consciousness (as deeper layer). Time of pure-consciousness. Endless. Not infinite (objective scientific idea) because time consciousness is endless because its absolute. All experiences will take place there. Stream of experience cannot begin snd cannot end. Form of consciousness continuum: Retention/protension structure. Now. Presence. Threefold limit of experience: 1) before (but needs content, cannot be empty container). Must contain a 'past now'. 2) after as a limit. Again holds something. 3) same time: a) succession, progression. Also includes b) simultaneous aspects (fringer retentions being included in the now). The 'now-form' the fringe befores and afters. Cant imagine future event without fringe befores and afters. Pure time consciousness doesnt actually flow temporally, instead more structured, like s unity. Not really flowing. Wholle thing grasped as a whole. Stream of consciousness and unity of one consciousness. And thats because tje makeup of consciousness is temporal For time, cannot be grasped as a whole, even though unified whole (cant actually experience continuum as a whole). Immanent though certain. One focal point with fringe befores and afters, can move to another fringe (new focal point) and then through intuition get the whole of time consciousness. Also, every experience has a core and then fringe as a supplementary. No two experiences identicial therefore because the fringe experiences comtext will be different. Two diff people perceice same thing but influencdd by fringe (but stilll talking about same thing). Interesting!

The only philosophy that, IMHO, makes any sense at all--paradoxically. (This series sounds terrific--glad I stumbled across it.)

Review: realm where all objects/ experiences/acts relate to this original primordial being. immanent/trasncendet bracketing - then can phemomology natural world - natural sicence and nature phenmology exists. when bracket psychology, essence of human beings, sociology, of the mind, community, social creations phenomologically. heidegger rejecting leap, foussed on natural world.

clearness of intuitions: different levels, pure self-givenness (related to intuition, not meditated through theories, concepts, ideas, immediately grasped) Clear: 1) make it graspable by intuition (direct apprehension of the object in consciosuness through object, imagination, memory, sense). 2) enhance clearness of it being intuitable. perfect clearness is a process. when grasping essences, we are grasping generalities, even if individual objects seen with less clarity. perception: primordial object-given experience in perfect clearness. anger: reflected on is dissipating anger, modifying it, anger necessarily dissipates a little. therefore, never have direct experiences of all kinds of conscious. representations, feelings - can't have direct experiences of conscious objects through these. free fancy - imagination (priviledged becaquse examining consciosuness itself) - another way can grasp everything (phenologically legitimate because looking to understand experience itself). this means historical examples, art, poetry - give us a way to uncover essences. can use fiction as source of all 'eternal truths'. because not studying extended, but consciosuness itself.

Suspending the natural world (inidivudal objectivities - empirical science that gives explanations for physical things and physical things) Surrendering the pure ego (focal point present in all constituted experiences). Pure ego not pure consciousness and not psychological ego (from last video).pure ego as focal point which orients the field. Orientation that pure consciousness takes on. Pure consciousness and pure ego coming together, not divorced from each other. It's on imminent side. Non constituted transcendence. Can separate it out but not really ???? Example???? Can't suspend it/can't reduce it. But will set it to the side. book 1 not concerned with this. also suspending god. because want to focus on field of pure consciousness. eidetic: transendencent to pure consciousness. have to exist as objects (in a way that means outside of pure consciousness). transcendent, can't disconnect all transcendence. formal logic: bracket this as part of the eidetic. science/logical constructs. phenom ology comes from intuition (immediate grasp of objects in experience). dont need formal logic or theories therefore. phenomology as a direct science material eidetics: having content, not formal. cannot bracket phenomological pure consciosuness itself. immanent essences within stream of consciosuness. transdencent material essences of inidividual objects - thing itself shape, colour, person, make the thing what it is. essence of transcendent empirical sciences - pure physics, geometry, psychology. immanent essences - cannot purifiy transcendent consciosuness itself.

26:38 i don't know why but this sounds so funny 🤣🤣

Article link no more, would you update it again?

Immanent and transcendent being: Every transcendnet experience can be imagined as doubted, gone. Perceptions right? Not about man of sciencd? This doubting is a tool to get to a deeper insight (the show difference between immanence and transcendence). Still left with immanent being (pure consciousness). Transcendent being is dependent on immanent being. Not spatial-temporal, not causal. Transcendent being as secondary.

Region of pure consciousness video: Natural standpoint assumes there is an external reality (like man of science). Contignent, not exist at all. All things, real world are correlate of our experiences, nut therefore relates to experiences and therefore consciousness. Conscious experience as empirical. Break down experience eidetically. Everything centred on me, me as referent. Experience is motivated, not logical, not standing outside it. Merlau-ponty: motivations, not about cause/effect. The phenomological field (1) can always focus with background. All this is eidetic insight, horizons, engsged in world, but neglected by husserl because less interested in this. More about how these experience occur, the ground, whats underpinning them.

The man in the street: Empiricism, world exists outside to me, knowledge through sensory data. Perceiving as emptiness. No essences. Just sensory data. No grounding of knowledge.

Experience of the natural world starts with consciousness (ground for it). Overlooked because so fundamental. Epoche - suspension of judgement from last video. Bracketing the natural world and then find something left over (consciousness). First step: natural world, then turn to essence of each object. Leads to more universal approach. Second step: essences to conscious events in general. Excluding experiences of the ego(self). Beyond the i-think Cartesian. The cogito: Piece of paper, cogitatio (conscious experience/thought) perceptual seeing. Paper itself is the object of thought (cogitatium). Difference between act of thought and thing about which I am thinking.

Field of intuition as our phenomogical field - aware of the world, space/time. Rhrough the sense, animals and others

Idealism doesent realise that essences can appearancs as objects, tends to justify through feeling of self-evidence (mystical) Intuition as grasping/conscious of it (no mysticism). All things can be grasped, not just empirical, different intuitions can be grasped (and will strip down to see what they are) Immediate seeing aw primordial dator? To see how object is constituted vs sensual seeing physically Consciousness is behind any object (through looking at object we can grasp this)

Eidetic reduction - from real world (facts/realities) to essences Transcendal reduction - purify psychological phenomena that is in real world (enact all of these reduction would lead to an eidetic reduction)

So I found this quote from Kant....could this be a coincidence? Chapter 2: A DREAMER’S ECSTATIC JOURNEY THROUGH THE WORLD OF SPIRITS "I have already stated that, according to our author, the many *powers and qualities of the soul are in sympathy with those organs of the body* which they govern. *The whole outer man therefore corresponds to the whole inner man* If, then, a perceptible spiritual influx from the *invisible* world flows mainly into some one of the powers of the soul, he harmoniously feels its apparent presence also in the corresponding member of his outer man. Under this head he classifies a great variety of sensations in his body which he claims are always connected with spiritual contemplation." But then the next sentence is.... "But their foolishness is too great for me to dare to quote even one of them." haha! From Dreams of a Spirit Seer or Delphi Classics The Collected Works of Immanuel Kant pg 208

Hey, thank you for this video

Really informative and thoughtful, much appreciated!

I found part one! You'll be my gym listening. Cheers Nathan.

True. Many of my ideas for poems come from my spontaneous dreams...some I had as a child I can still remember. Without a doubt my dreams at times can possess me by my own interpretation and formulated idea from them...

I feel much more comfortable with Monty Python. 😂

Hello my namesake. I've been deeply enjoying getting deeper into phenomenology and how it relates to poetry, which Merleau-Ponty discusses (he often mentions Ponge). Some of MP's work has filtered into my own book about poetry, which I am writing, and will make videos about soon enough (along with my others). Anyway! Glad to have found you. Great work; I'm going to dive deeper into your channel. Subbed.

I agree " we do not possess our ideas...but our ideas possess us" and others who may fall into our ideas. Great perception to help us in our journey.

Comparable somehow to Hegel..

*Contents* 01:03 IDEAS 02:06 Idea as structure 03:29 Connecting the idea to the world 04:49 Ideas possessing us 08:12 STRICT VS. PURE IDEALITY 08:18 Strict ideality 13:30 Pure ideality 14:32 Pure ideas are still connected to the body and sensible things 17:22 Pure Ideality requires a different kind of flesh 20:33 The flesh of the body and world anchor pure ideality 24:52 Sense/Ideas in strict and pure ideality 28:46 The whole over the parts 38:17 The idea is not layered on top of a meaningless sensible reality 40:29 Diagram (1) 42:15 Reversibility in strict and pure ideality 43:47 The hinge in strict and pure ideality 46:37 A second kind of intertwining 48:01 Diagram (2) 50:11 Ideas lying beyond the words 51:01 The never-finished differentiation between sign and sign 57:23 Diagram (3) 57:53 The fifth chapter 01:00:19 Summary 01:05:21 Next series: Derrida

Ah ok I nailed it down. The flesh of the world is the ontological being of the Umwelt as first described by Uexküll. The flesh of the body is the “a priori of the species” which is essentially the body schema. The flesh of the world is the schema of sensibility which connects all possible Umwelten, which is time in its broadest sense.

Ah ok I nailed it down. The flesh of the world is the ontological being of the Umwelt as first described by Uexküll. The flesh of the body is the “a priori of the species” which is essentially the body schema. The flesh of the world is the schema of sensibility which connects all possible Umwelten, which is time in its broadest sense.

Hi Nathan, what do you think of "BERGSONISM" by Deleuze? Can I read it while listening to your stuff?

Discovered evidence that Merleau-Ponty did consider the flesh of the world to be a radical reinterpretation of the principle of sufficient reason, which was for Schopenhauer the principle which the will implemented to give rise / existence to the phenomenal world (world as representation) & the subject as individual person in the world! Merleau-Ponty was acquainted with Heidegger's 1957 lecture, "The Principle of Reason" in which Heidegger gave his own radical interpretation of the PSR. On pages 31-32 of that lecture/writing, Heidegger states: "Let us pause for a bit, if we may: the principle of reason-the ground/reason of the principle. *Here something turns in on itself* *Here something coils in on itself* but does not close itself, for it uncoils itself at the same time. Here is a coil, a living coil, like a snake. Here something catches [fangt] itself at [an] its own end. Here is a commencement [Anfang] that is already completion. *The principle of reason as the ground/reason of the principle--this odd relationship confuses our ordinary cognition* This should not surprise us, given that the confusion now surfacing has a genuine origin. One could of course doubt this and suggest that the confusion springs from our playing with the words Grund [ground, reason] and Satz [principle ] which make up the title: the Grundsatz [fundamental principle] of reason. Yet the word game immediately comes to an end if we refer to the Latin formulation of the principle of reason. It reads: *Nihil est sine ratione* But how does the corresponding Latin title read? Leibniz names the principle of reason the principium rationis. What **principium** means here can best be learned through the succinct definition that the most industrious student of Leibniz, Christian Wolff, gives in his Ontology. There he says: *principium dicitur id, quod in se continet rationem alterius* According to this, a principium is what contains in itself the *ratio* for something else. Hence the principium is nothing other than the ratio rationis: the reason of reason. The Latin title of the principle of reason also plunges us into the same *confused tangle* (Verflechtung, intertwiting) the reason of reason; reason *turns back upon itself* just as it did when the principle of reason declared itself the ground/reason of the principle." It's a kind of primal co-constituting, self-grounding of body/world.

What about Proust?

"the question arises whether we have crossed the formal sphere in what has been said so far, since we have spoken of the visual and acoustic, of sensory qualities of every known kind. I believe that we can, to the greatest extent, leave the specifics of such qualities merely exemplary, that is, in free indeterminacy. We only encounter qualities of experienced things in such categories, and even in free imagination, specific sensory qualities of known categories must belong to the imagined things as colorations, etc. But we also recognize the contingency of these categories of qualities in that they can be absent in empirical intuition, meaning they are not necessary for the unity of a concrete intuition. In fully vivid tactile intuition of a thing, there need not be any accompanying visual intuition; its concreteness is given intuitively, but without visual qualification, and vice versa. Similarly, things can be given without all the apperceptive qualities of smell, taste, etc., that belong to them. It is necessary only that visual or tactile qualities are given because our intuition cannot offer a primarily fulfilled extension in any other way. *But we see from this "or" that neither one nor the other, that is, neither is a necessary requirement for extension, and perhaps other categories of qualification, inaccessible to us, could also be primarily* fulfilling. In any case, aside from the contingent categories of qualities, there remain general necessities for phantoms and qualifications in general." Husserl Nature and Spirit/Mind I thought this was cool There could be other ways of sensing aside from vision and touch that make a thing sensible. I though flesh might encompass this, correlative with other types of beings with other ways of sensing.

Hey Nate, got the book in the mail!! I am so happy. I’m already about a quarter of the way through it. I can hear your voice in my head when I’m reading it. Man it’s a huge tome! - makes being and time look like a coffee table book…

You can gain intuition into quantum mechanics even though you have no sense experience of it, nor can you. After years of working with QM equations, you get a sense of what would happen in an experiemental situation. You kinda think classically but then say things like "but quantum effects would ..." and then add some intuition coming from the math. I'm not sure how to fit this into Merleau-Ponty's theory of ideas as the depth to experience. There is something of the physics community coming to play here because we all talk this way. Maybe MP is missing the intersubjectivity provided by rich language that makes "experience of the non-experienciable" possible?

🎉thanks 🎉🤓

*Contents* 02:33 SECOND MEANING OF VISION: IDEA (1) 09:46 FLESH 10:02 Revision: The Intertwining 10:51 Revision: Relation between me as seer and thing as seen 14:55 Revision: Flesh as element 16:37 New idea: The reversibility of the touching and touched as unexperienceable 20:42 SECOND MEANING OF VISION: IDEA (2) 21:04 The “hinge” between touching and touched 22:46 The “hinge” as the unexperienceable total being of my body and that of the world 26:30 Second visibility 32:21 The bond between flesh and idea 33:54 The visible (flesh) and the invisible (idea) 40:04 E.g. Swann’s “little phrase” 48:30 Different kinds of ideas 53:49 Ideas in detail 55:43 Ideas as invisible 56:43 Importance of the “screen” (the carnal experience) 01:00:51 The inexplicability of ideas 01:07:29 Summary

One of my favorite quotes from MP given in the Nature Course Lectures: Here MP says: “For the flesh is *Urpräsentierbarkeit* of the *Nichturpräsentiertem* as such, the visibility of the invisible” meaning: “For the flesh is the *primordial presentability* of the *non-primordial presentability*-the visibility of the invisible." --- 1. The body is not only a thing, but also a relation to an *Umwelt*: this is already true of the animal body (cf. the lessons from two years ago: Uexküll). But this we know by the perception of the animal body which is ours: we are not animal, and our body is not this perception that we have of it. The human is not its *Bauplan*-“it is moved” (Uexküll), whereas the dog, and above all the human, moves. The human body is thus a body that moves, and this means also a body that perceives. This is one of the meanings of the human “corporal schema.” To take up this notion again, to make the body appear as a subject of movement and a subject of perception-if that is not verbal, it means: the body as touching-touched, seeing-seen, the place of a kind of reflection and, thereby, the capacity to relate itself to something other than its own mass, to close its circuit on the visible, on a sensible exterior. Essential: *Theory of the flesh,* of the body as *Empfindbarkeit* and of things as implicated in it. This has nothing in common with a consciousness that would descend into a body-object. It is, on the contrary, the wrapping of a body-object around itself, or rather, a truce of metaphors. It is not a surveying of the body and of the world by a consciousness, but rather is my body as interposed between what is in front of me and what is behind me, my body standing in front of the upright things, in a circuit with the world, an *Einfühlung* with the world, with the things, with the animals, with other bodies (as having a perceptual “side” as well) made comprehensible by this theory of the flesh. For the flesh is *Urpräsentierbarkeit* of the *Nichturpräsentiertem* as such, the visibility of the invisible-we require an esthesiology, the study of this miracle that is a sense organ. It is figuration in the visible of the invisible “becoming aware.” We say that the problem of instinct is a labyrinth and we seek to eliminate it (intracorporal arrangement in relation to distant exterior stimuli, far off in migration). But the eye is entirely external finality made for what is absent, made for a future vision (the embryo). In this arrangement of flesh, then, there appears or emerges a vision (because we cannot say that the vision of the infant precedes that of the mother, the soul or consciousness of the mother is not pregnant with the soul or consciousness of the child), there is birth, that is, a new consciousness surges forth (as does life in physico-chemistry) by the arrangement of a hollow, by the irruption of a new field that comes from the interworld and is not the effect of antecedents, not necessitated by them, even if it depends on them. Thus the eye, with its nervous apparatus, takes to seeing. Certainly it is then scanned by something else, vision, but this double invisible, this “other side” of the eye is not a “soul.” (Descartes: “It is not the eye that sees, it is the soul.”) For Self or Spirit: It is “attached” to the visual apparatus; it is invisible only as the other sides of things are, that is, as a variant of their visible aspect, as co-vision of the same things. I see that other humans see. We know already that there is a natural negativity, an interiority of the living organism-now we understand it. It is not that life is a power--- ------ We must say of it what we said of life in relation to physico-chemistry. It represents a unique point where a different dimensionality emerges. *Empfindbarkeit*, if not localized, is at least not independent of locality. It is not located in my head or my body, but even less so elsewhere. It is perceived in a *Spielraum* outside of which it is nothing. But it manifests in life through the opening of a depth that exists not for the rest of life as a being-other, a relative non-being-relative, the only non-being that there is to consider, natural negativity. All these inquiries converge: it is the brute being of perception that allows us to understand, first, how there can be (new physics) beings that are not a hard nucleus; second, how macro-phenomena of another level can be designed there: living beings; third, how these bodies can be flesh, *Empfindbarkeit*, how *Empfinden* can be mounted on an invisible framework (the articulation of the touched body-touching body) and the things sensed, as well as the body touched, installed around a central emptiness, or inhabited by a structure that is their carnal reality. **The Libidinal Body and Intercorporeity; Esthesiology: The Union of the Soul and the Body Taken Seriously** The usual alternative: The body as one of the things, or the body as my point of view on the things, is put back into question; it is both: thing-standard as flesh; to sense my body is also to have its posture in the world. The relationship with the world is included in the relation of the body with itself. The relation of my two hands = the exchange between them; the touched hand is given to the touching hand as touching; they are the mirror of each other-something similar in the relation with things: they "touch me" just as much as I touch them. Not surprising: They are that on which the synergy of my body opens; they are made of the same stuff as the corporal schema; I haunt them from a distance, they haunt me from a distance. I am with them in a relation of *Einfühlung*: my within is an echo of their within. But as a result, the corporal schema is going to be not only a relation to things and to an *Umwelt* of things, but also a relation to other corporal schemas. Among the things, there are living "similars." an] esthesiology, the study of this miracle that is a sense organ. It is figuration in the visible of the invisible “becoming aware.” We say that the problem of instinct is a labyrinth and we seek to eliminate it (intracorporal arrangement in relation to distant exterior stimuli, far off in migration).

What do you think Merleau-Ponty is getting at when he refers, repeatedly, to “crossed out” ie the world, the flesh not as fact or sum of facts but as the locus of an inscription of truth : the false crossed out, not nullified” “I am visible from elsewhere, and if I and the cube are together caught up in one same "element" (should we say of the seer, or of the visible? ), this cohesion, this visibility by principle, prevails over every momentary discordance. In advance every vision or very partial visible that would here definitively come to naught is *not nullified (which would leave a gap in its place), but, what is better, it is replaced by a more exact vision and a more exact visible, according to the principle of visibility, which, as though through a sort of abhorrence of a vacuum, already invokes the true vision and the true visible, not only as substitutes for their errors, but also as their explanation, their relative justification, so that they are, as Husserl says so aptly, not erased, but "crossed out." . * . . Such are the extravagant consequences to which we are led when we take seriously, when we question, vision.” Obviously it’s been mutated and adapted to a new question, if it’s the same germ of thought at all.

34:53 the P is silent, it's pronounced de tro

Thanks a lot for this series! I was wondering if you ever considered doing MP's The Structure of Behavior? I just started reading it myself.

*quale* - ku-wall-Ay as in qualitative, qual-ay the e is pronounced like “ay” in “day”

I know why you're here, AB. I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for MP. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's *the* question, AB. It's the question that drives us. It's the question that brought you here. *You know the question, just as I did* AB: What is -the Matrix- the Flesh of the World?

Thank you. One question: by memory, does Bergson refers to the faculty or the content of that faculty? Cause the two have one word in English.

*writes a 30 page essay*

Great explanation! Thank you!

*Contents* 00:16 A correction from the last video 02:40 FLESH 06:47 The hiddenness of things in flesh 09:10 Flesh as a Whole 11:05 BEYOND CONSCIOUSNESS 11:21 E.g. Reversibility in the left hand touching the right hand 13:05 Question: How can my two hands touch the same object? 14:50 Beyond Cartesian dualism to flesh 20:02 Body as Sentient in general before a Sensible in general 22:58 INTERCORPOREITY 24:00 The change in terminology 29:47 My body is open to other bodies 31:14 E.g. Reversibility in the handshake 33:59 The truth of other people 36:18 Phenomenology (Sartre’s look)  Ontology (MP’s flesh) 39:24 Shared experience 48:00 The (non-)problem of the alter ego 50:05 Intercorporeity enabling the revelation of my own self 55:51 Summary

FYI - "Urepräsentierbarkeit" does not mean un-presentability. Rather, it means "primordial presentable-ness" or "original presentability". "Ur-", indicates something that is foundational or exists in its earliest form ("proto"). For example, in German, "Urteil" means "judgment" but can also be broken down into "Ur-" (original) and "Teil" (part), which in its roots could be understood as an "original division" or "primal decision". Another example is "Urzeit" which refers to prehistoric times, literally meaning "original time." For Husserl, "Ur-" emphasizes the a primal or fundamental nature, often pointing to _the most basic or original form of something in experience or being_ It could, _somewhat_ humorlessly be thought of as: *"Primordial-Pre-Sense-ify-able-ness"* or *"Proto-Pre-Percept-ize-ability-ness"* meaning: *"The state of **_being able to be made perceptible_** in a primordial or original way before anything else."*