Importance of Touch for a Democratic Culture

To situate my words in the context of Maurice Merleau Ponty’s inheritance, I will introduce them with two quotations. The first is of Machiavelli and it is drawn from the book of Merleau Ponty Eloge de la philosophie (In Praise of Philosophy): ‘Men generally judge with their eyes more than with their hands. Every man can see, but very few men can touch. Everyone easily sees what one seems, but almost none can identify what one is really, and this little number of penetrating spirits do not dare to contradict the multitude which has, as shield, the majesty of the state’ (cf. ‘Note sur Machiavel’ in Eloge de la philosophie, Folio Essais, p. 296; cf. ‘Note on Machiavelli’ in In Praise of Philosophy). Merleau Ponty comments on these words saying that it is thus a fundamental condition of politics to be practised according to appearances (idem). Be that as it may, it is on a ‘communion’ between citizens that Machiavelli intends to found a republican community. Now a communion has more to do with touch than with sight. The second quotation is drawn from the treatise De Anima, in which Aristotle claims that ‘the sense of touch is (…) the only one the privation of which leads to the death of animals’ (De l’âme, III, 13, Nécessité du toucher, p. 97; De Anima, III, 13, Necessity of Touch (435 b)). And, for Aristotle, ‘animals’ means all living beings endowed with locomotion, thus also human beings.