Abstract
This paper examines Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the reality of things and the world as revealed through perception. It clarifies two central points: first, that Merleau-Ponty understands existence as a field or milieu imbued with particular qualities that we apprehend perceptually; and second, that he distinguishes between the reality of individual perceived objects and that of the encompassing world, treating them as distinct levels of reality. Through a critical engagement with Husserl’s transcendental idealism and Bergson’s theory of images, this study elucidates how Merleau-Ponty navigates between reductive idealism and naïve realism. He characterizes reality not as a collection of objective, separable properties, but as an indeterminate structure or field that cannot be exhaustively described by perception. Furthermore, while individual perceptions may be subject to error, the reality of the world as a whole persists independently of any particular perceptual mistake. Merleau-Ponty thus advances a phenomenology of reality that acknowledges both the ambiguity inherent in perceptual experience and the enduring certainty of the world itself, offering a nuanced alternative to traditional metaphysical dichotomies.
