Merleau-Ponty opens the first part of the Phenomenology, which will acquaint us with the body proper or one's own body, with a description of the paradox at work in perception: the paradox of an in-itself-for-us. Perception is always situated and perspectival but perception is also always perception of the thing, and not of a perspective as a sign of the thing. It is this paradox that objective thought forgets by taking the terminus of perception, the object, as the reason for and the explanation of the experience through which it appeared.

What we must attempt to understand then is ‘how vision can come about from somewhere without thereby being locked within its perspective’ (PP, 69). The answer will be found in the inner and outer horizons of the perceived, which are correlates of the imminent power of exploration of my gaze. My gaze enters into the object and inhabits it. Exploring it, I experience ‘all things according to the sides these other things turn toward this object’, but these other things are also ‘places open to my gaze’ and as such ‘I already perceive the central object of my present vision from different angles’ (PP, 71). The house, then, as the terminus of my perception, is not the house seen from nowhere. Such an object would be a thought or idea and not something perceived. Rather it is the house seen from everywhere (PP, 71). But this formulation is also not quite accurate. Indeed, as Merleau-Ponty writes,

While I do reach the thing with my gaze, this thing never achieves in my vision the ‘perfect density’ of an object. This seems to be a flaw of perception that is due to my being able to occupy only one perspective at the time.