“Gestalt
September, 1959
What is a Gestalt? A whole that does not reduce itself to the sum of the parts— a negative, exterior definition — A designation of the Gestalt by contrast with the domain of the in itself in which one is installed ——the Gestalthafte, says Heidegger, is here left aside ——
From within, then, (that is: not be interior observation, but by approaching the Gestalt as much as possible, by communicating with it, which can be done by considering the others of the visible as well as by considering “states of consciousness”) what is a Gestalt? What is a contour, what is a segregation, what is a circle of a line? Or an organisation in depth, a relief?
…..
There remains to understand precisely what the being for itself of the Gestalt experience is ——It is being for X, not a pure agile nothingness, but an inscription in an open register, in a lake of non being, in an Eröffnung, in an offene. “ (Merleau-Ponty, p.205)
