Phenomenology of perception

Phénoménologie of Perception is the Magnum opus Philosophe Phénoménologique French Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

According to explicitly the work of Edmund Husserl, the project of Merleau-Ponty is to reveal the phenomenologic structure of the Perception.

Summary of work

Introduction: Traditional prejudices and the return to the phenomena

the “feeling” - Merleau-Ponty analyzes the concept of Sensation and releases some, in spite of an apparent obviousness in “the natural attitude” (that in which we think of being able to precisely define what are the words “to feel”, “to see”, etc), the complex character. He challenges the concept of “pure feeling” which does not correspond to any lived experiment (the feelings are relative ) and agrees with the Gestalttheorie (the Psychologie of the form) to define the perceptive phenomenon as “a figure on a bottom”: no significant data is isolated, it is always given in a field (there is not “pure impression”). He refutes then the “prejudice of the objective world”: there is not “objective reality”, perception is anchored in a subjectivity which, in fact, product of unspecified and confusion (which do not result from a “lack of Attention”). Merleau-Ponty comes to the conclusion that the Psychologie did not manage to define the feeling; but the Physiologie of was it not more able, since the problem of the “objective world” arises again and that it enters in contradiction with the experiment (example with the Illusion of Müller-Lyer): to include/understand what means “to feel”, it is thus necessary to return to the préobjective internal experiment.

“association” and the “projection of the memories” - the Sensation does not correspond to coincidence between the prone feeling and quality (for example red) perceived. The author highlights the Intentionnalité of the Conscience: the conscience is perceptive conscience of . He refutes then the thesis Empiriste of “association of the ideas” (in vogue since Locke): if the latter brings back the experiment passed, there is Aporie since the first experiment did not comprise connection with other experiments. On the contrary, the feeling shapes within a “horizon of direction” and it is to leave the significance perceived that there can be associations with similar experiments (and not opposite). An impression cannot “awake others of them”: the Perception is not made significant data supplemented by a “projection of the to remember S”; indeed, to call upon the memories presupposes precisely that the significant data were formatted and acquired a direction , whereas it is this direction which the “projection of the memories” was supposed to restore.

Random links: