What follows from this reinscription of the body schema in the flesh of the world is a conception of intercorporeity that eschews the mediation of the image of the other in favor of a generality of sensibility, a sensible commons that is not simply a common sense:
But as a result, the corporal schema is going to be not only a relation to the things and to an Umwelt of things, but also a relation to other corporal schema. Among the things, there are living "similars." These are going to insert themselves in the circuit of my hand to my hand. The coupling of my two hands = recognition of a “behavior" in which appears a "thing"; the active hand lives at a distance from the other. Likewise, the coupling of my hand and the hand of another: my corporal schema as an animal of conducts lives at a distance in the living exterior. There are [sic] among them a carnal relation, an extension of the narcissism of the body. This narcissism is also an opening to generality: I live the offered behaviors as my own, and I see them animated by a corporal schema. The flesh also resolves the problem here: it is because I perceive that the other is possible for me as an other perceiving the same sensibles that I perceive. Massive flesh of esthesiology, flesh of co-perception made subtle, of identification between corporal schemas. My corporal schema is projected in the others and is also introjected, has relations of being with them, seeks identification, appears as undivided among them, desires them. Desire considered from the transcendental point of view = common framework of my world as carnal and of the world of the other. (224–225)
This sensory generality furnishes a deeper foundation for what had earlier been the basis for intercorporeity: namely, the image of the other. Just as the elucidation of primordial tactility as a protoreversibility deepens, rather than displaces, the role of vision and its complex articulation with technicity, the sharing of body schemata serves to ground the commonality of the visible. It thus explains why the visual experience of the other (of the other's image) can yield intercorporeity. For this reason, Merleau-Ponty can invoke "an opening of my body to other bodies: just as I touch my hand touching, I perceive others as perceiving. The articulation of their body on the world is lived by me in the articulation of my body on the world where I see them." What is more, this sharing of embodied schematism introduces a reversibility at the heart of intercorporeity: "my body is also made up of their corporeality. My corporal schema is a normal means of knowing other bodies and these know my body. Universal-lateral of the co-perception of the world” (218).
BODIES IN CODE
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