This paper analyzes, from the opposition of the Cartesian notion of the mechanics of light and the idea of vision as distance possession developed by Merleau-Ponty, the criticism of philosophical modernity and its general paradigms of the centrality of reason. It is, strictly speaking, two distinct conceptions of sensitivity: one associated with mechanics, the other with existence. According to Merleau-Ponty, light as a movement of particles and corpuscles does not account for vision as the subject's installation in a mundane situation. (...) More than that, the contemporary conception of vision allows, among other things, to deal with the problem of the substantial union of body and soul, overcoming the impasses that even modern philosophy has not been able to answer. (shrink)