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Truth of perception: there is no objectivity without a point of view, in itself: i.e., an observer is necessary, with his 'levels,' his 'soil,' his 'homeland,' his perceptual 'norms,' in short, his 'earth' (which is not fixed in the sense of the pre-Copernicans, but not simply a moving object within a system of relative movements)...The 'earth' is archē: it bears the possibility of all being above the nothingness, above the flood--seed of the threatened world, on the basis of which everything blooms again. It is 'nature' in the sense of perceptual cosmogony, neither in itself nor for God, but our horizon. It is 'in itself' and in a certain manner for itself (i.e., attached to itself, as its appearance in my experience proves) without which it would be in the sense of percipere, of synopsis: it is this 'preparation for perception' that the Husserlian endpoint of teleology designates.
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Institution and Passivity: Course Notes from the Collège de France, 1954-1955)