SOURCE: Ihde, Don. “Singing the World: Language and Perception.” In The Horizons of the Flesh: Critical Perspectives on the Thought of Merleau-Ponty, edited by Garth Gillian, pp. 61-77. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973.

In the following essay, Ihde discusses Merleau-Ponty's theories of phenomenology.

Phenomenology is a revolution in man's understanding of himself and his world. But the newness and radicality of this revolution is faced with a problem, the same problem which arises in the epiphany of any new phenomenon. What phenomenology has to say must be made understandable—but what it has to say is such that it cannot be said easily in a language already sedimented and accommodated to a perspective quite different from that taken by the revolutionary. What eventually may be said must first be “sung.” One only gradually learns to hear what sounds forth from the “song.”

Not long ago an illustrative event...