ABSTRACT
Of all the implications of the contrast between vision and hearing, the most consequential has been the notion that vision, since it is untainted by the subjective experience of light, yields a knowledge of the outside world that is rational, detached, analytical and atomistic. This chapter reviews the ideas of three mid-twentieth-century thinkers, all of whom had important things to say about vision which were critical, in one way or another, of Descartes. The first, Hans Jonas, went out of his way to stress the differences between vision, hearing and touch as sensory modalities. The second, James Gibson, rejected the two-stage model of visual perception, and with it the classic Cartesian dualism of body and mind. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, has perhaps gone further than any other recent thinker in recognising that vision is not just a matter of seeing things but is crucially an experience of light.
