Unlike Lacan’s gaze that either cuts us off from the world and others a la the mirror stage or fixes us in a triangle of unfulfillable desire a la The Four Fundamental Concepts, Merleau-Ponty imagines vision as a means of connection and communion, Rather than the alienation and conflict at the heart of either Sartre’s or Lacan’s notions of the gaze, with Merleau-Ponty we find wonder at the gap between us, the distance that enables us to relate to each other.