This chapter contains sections titled: The Crisis of the Phenomenological Subject The Birth of the Ethical Subject The Subject Responsible for the Other Lévinas Is Not a Phenomenologist Endnotes.

The essay attempts to delineate how Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception can be applied to theories of sign processes, and how it reworks the framework of the phenomenalist conception of communication. His later philosophy involved a reformulation of subjectivity and a resolution of the subject/object dualism. My claim is that this non-reductionist theory of perception reveals a different view of nature as we experience it in an expressive and meaningful interaction. The perspective that another living being has and (...) communicates entails a form of depth, the invisible dimension of the visible or audible. These two aspects of perception and dialogue are intertwined in a dialectic of presence and absence, so that sense arises in the perceptual field rather than in subjectivity. This, I argue, is the most fundamental result of his theory. The origination of meaning in the workings of the chiasm of visible and invisible in perception opens up an objective sense of intersubjective nature. The essay also deals with the role of the phenomenological reduction; a suspension of beliefs and existence claims in experience. The reduction enables us to take a step back and look more closely at our understanding of nature in light of the historical and cultural influence on our thinking. (shrink)

In phenomenology, theories of empathy are intimately connected with the question of how it is possible to have insight into the mind of the other person. In this article, the author wants to show why it is self-evident for us that the other person is having experiences. In order to do so, it is not enough to discuss the phenomenon of empathy with a starting point in the already constituted adult person; instead the article presents a genetic approach to human (...) development. The author thus contrasts Edith Stein’s discussion of Einfühlung (empathy), which takes its starting point in the experience of the grown-up, with Max Scheler’s discussion of Einsfühlung (feeling of oneness), where the relation between mother and infant is taken as one example. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the world of the infant is read as one way of developing Scheler’s theory of intersubjectivity and of Einsfühlung. This genetic approach is developed further into a phenomenological analysis of the experience of the fetus and of birth. The author argues that the analysis of the fetus highlights the distinction between knowing that another person is having experiences, and knowing the specific content of the other person’s experiences. The fetus does not experience different persons, but has a pre-subjective experience of life that includes what is later experienced as belonging to “another.” Later in life, the experience of empathy, as an experience of a specific content, can be developed from this experience. In this way empathy and Einsfühlung can be understood as complementary rather than as competing phenomena. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was an important twentieth century contributor to the theory of recognition, even though he made literal reference to the concept only sparingly. He emphasized the importance of recognition, not only at the level of inter-personal relations and in the individual’s inclusion in the social, but also in terms of the capacity of human beings to communicate across cultures and across historical distances. The shift towards ontology in his later work provided a renewed grounding for his interest in (...) intersubjectivity and cross-cultural communication. Such continuity might be traced to lasting Hegelian and Marxian legacies in his thinking, which inflected his political interpretation of recognition. (shrink)

Several commentators have argued that with his concept of anonymity Merleau-Ponty breaks away from classical Husserlian phenomenology that is methodologically tied to the first person perspective. Many contemporary commentators see Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity as a break away from Husserl’s framework that is seen as hopelessly subjectivistic and solipsistic. Some judge and reproach it as a disastrous misunderstanding that leads to a confusion of philosophical and empirical concerns. Both parties agree that Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of anonymity mark a divergence from classical (...) Husserlian phenomenology. I will question this view and demonstrate that Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity remains Husserlian in two important senses: it analyses senses in terms of constituting selves and communities of such selves, and it accounts for the formation of experience by the temporal sedimentation of intentional activity. The argument proceeds in four steps. The first section argues against the widely spread notion according to which Merleau-Ponty’s anonymous subject is collective. In the second section, I offer an alternative reading by demonstrating that Merleau-Ponty uses the term “anonymous” primarily to characterize the lived body of a personal subject. In section three, I introduce Merleau-Ponty’s idea of trace and show that for him both the perceived thing and the perceiving body are traces and as such refer to earlier constitutive acts of alien subjects. I then argue that Husserl’s concepts of sedimentation are crucial for the understanding of this idea. Finally, in section four, I show how Husserl’s theory of depresentation informs Merleau-Ponty’s discourse on anonymity. (shrink)

In the prospectus for his later work pronounced in 1952, Merleau-Ponty announced that his move beyond the phenomenological to the ontological level of analysis is motivated by issues of sociality, notably communication with others.' I propose to interrogate this priority attributed by the author to this interpersonal bond in his reflections on corporeality in general, marking a departure from The Structure of Behavior and The Phenomenology of Perception, which privileged the starting point of consciousness and the body proper. My interest (...) lies particularly in exposing the psychological sources of Merleau-Ponty's thinking about the primacy of sociality. Referring to his lectures on Child Psychology and Pedagogy, which he delivered as Professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1949-52,2 I will develop the contention that the developmental psychology of child sociality significantly informed his understanding of relations between self and other laid out in the later texts, and henceforth informed also his conception of the flesh. Specifically, the psychological hypotheses about the anonymous and fusional form initially taken by human sociality appears to play a determining role in his conception of interpersonal life formulated on the ontological plane. I will then point to the internal tensions involved in the theory of sociality based on the thesis of anonymity and disclose an alternative theoretical account, which has the merit of preserving the advantages of the anonymity thesis while avoiding its drawbacks; it also facilitates continued dialogue between Merleau-Ponty's philosophy and recent developmental psychology. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's claim in Phenomenology of Perception (1962) that the anonymous body guarantees an intersubjective world is problematic because it omits the particularities of bodies. This omission produces an account of "dialogue" with another in which I solipsistically hear only myself and dominate others with my intentionality. This essay develops an alternative to projective intentionality called "hypothetical construction," in which meaning is socially constructed through an appreciation of the differences of others.

Merleau-Ponty's claim in Phenomenology of Perception that the anonymous body guarantees an intersubjective world is problematic because it omits the particularities of bodies. This omission produces an account of “dialogue” with another in which I solipsistically hear only myself and dominate others with my intentionality. This essay develops an alternative to projective intentionality called “hypothetical construction,” in which meaning is socially constructed through an appreciation of the differences of others.

This essay suggests what M. Merleau-Ponty’s conceptions of primordial symbolism and embodied intersubjectivity imply for the problem of the existence and manifestation of dynamically unconscious experiences. First, the paper draws attention to two distinct approaches to the unconscious in the Phenomenology of Perception. One line of argumentation proceeds from the notion of bad faith, which plays a pivotal role in J.-P. Sartre’s critique of psychoanalysis; another line subsumes unconscious thoughts under the neurological notion of body schema. Later, in (...) Lectures on Passivity, Merleau-Ponty combines this expanded notion of body schema with his conception of “promiscuity,” which he illustrates with Freud’s case study of Dora. The paper explains how this new approach to intersubjectivity provides a basis for the manifestation of experiences against which the subject adopts defensive reactions. Finally, it is argued that this position does not equal a straightforward rejection of the notion of pre-reflective cogito and the problem of awareness of unconscious experiences thus remains open. (shrink)

A good summary of Merleau-Ponty's theory of intersubjectivity, drawn from the Phénoménologie de la perception and La structure du comportement. Barral sees Merleau-Ponty's work in this area more as a groundwork for further investigation than as a satisfactory philosophy of the person-in-relation itself; since this topic is a central one in Merleau-Ponty, her study is a helpful introduction to much of his philosophy.—J. J.

This paper explicates Merleau-Ponty's highly original theory of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Merleau-Ponty challenges traditional philosophy/psychology by rejecting the notion of subjective awareness as an introspective awareness of the private contents of one's own consciousness. For Merleau-Ponty, the subjective is a prereflective, prepersonal bodily openess to an anonymous visibility, a visibility in which both the individual and others participate. Thus, for Merleau-Ponty, the personal/ subjective and the shared/ intersubjective overlap. This view escapes the individualism of the West and the (...) collectivism of authoritarian communism. It provides a balanced theory for both political theory and practice. (shrink)

It has become typical to read Kant and Merleau-Ponty as offering competing approaches to perceptual experience. Kant is interpreted as an ‘intellectualist’ who regards perception as conceptual ‘all the way out’, while Merleau-Ponty is seen as Kant’s challenger, who argues that perception involves non-conceptual, embodied ‘coping’. In this paper, however, I argue that a closer examination of their views of perception, especially with respect to the notion of ‘schematism’, reveals a great deal of historical and philosophical continuity between them. By (...) analyzing Kant’s theory of schematism, the interpretation of it by the Neo-Kantian Pierre Lachièze-Rey, and Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the body schema, we find that aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception are better understood as a development of Kant’s theory of perception. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an explication and defense of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of concept formation. I argue that at the core of this theory is a distinction between concepts proper and the kinds of generalities characteristic of perceptual experience, which I call “pre-conceptual generalities.” According to Merleau-Ponty, concepts are developed through a two-stage process: first, the establishment of such pre-conceptual generalities, and second, the clarification of these generalities into concepts. I provide phenomenological evidence for the existence of pre-conceptual (...) generalities and explain how they can serve to ground concept formation. To motivate Merleau-Ponty’s account, I consider objections raised by Husserl, Cassirer, and Sellars to the classical philosophical account of empirical concept formation, abstraction. I show that Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between concepts and pre-conceptual generalities provides a philosophically viable account of the formation of empirical concepts while avoiding the problems faced by accounts that rely on abstraction. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s later work by tracing a hitherto overlooked set of concerns that were of key consequence for the formulation of his ontological research. I argue that his ontology can be understood as a response to a set of problems originating in reflections on the intersubjective use of language in dialogue, undertaken in the early 1950s. His study of dialogue disclosed a structure of meaning-formation and pointed towards a theory of truth (both recurring ontological topics) (...) that post-Phenomenology premises could not account for. A study of dialogue shows that speakers’ positions are interchangeable, that speaking subjects are active and passive in varying degrees, and that the intentional roles of subjects and objects are liable to shift or ‘transgress’ themselves. These observations anticipate the concepts of ‘reversibility’ and ‘narcissism’, his later view of activity and passivity, and his later view of intentionality, and sharpened the need to adopt an intersubjective focus in ontological research. (shrink)

At the time of his death in May 1961, Maurice Merleau-Ponty held the chair of Philosophy at the College de France. Together with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, he was cofounder of the successful and influential review Les Temps Modernes. However, after Merleau-Ponty's two studies of Marxist theory and practice (Humanisme et Terreur and Les Aventures de la Dialectique), he alienated both orthodox Marxists and "mandarins of the left" such as Sartre and de Beauvoir. Perhaps his most lasting (...) contribution to the interpretation of human existence was his formulation of a positive philosophical approach to psychology the foundations of which were clearly outlined in The Structure of Behavior and later more fully developed in Phenomenology of Perception. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty was a pivotal figure in twentieth century French philosophy. He was responsible for bringing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers, Husserl and Heidegger, to France and instigated a new wave of interest in this approach. His influence extended well beyond the boundaries of philosophy and can be seen in theories of politics, art and language. This is the first volume to bring together a comprehensive selection of Merleau-Ponty's writing and presents a cross-section of his work which shows the (...) historical progression of his ideas and influence. (shrink)

This article presents two different phenomenological paths leading from ego to alter ego: a Husserlian and a Merleau-Pontian way of thinking. These two phenomenological paths serve to disentangle the conceptual–philosophical underpinning of the mirror neurons system hypothesis, in which both ways of thinking are entwined. A Merleau-Pontian re-reading of the mirror neurons system theory is proposed, in which the characteristics of mirror neurons are effectively used in the explanation of action understanding and imitation. This proposal uncovers the remaining necessary (...) presupposition of a minimalized version of the Husserlian concept of pairing and its recent and improved version in terms of the intermodal system. This leads to a layered approach to the constitution of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation of Gestalt theory in The Structure of Behavior is central to his entire corpus. Yet commentators exhibit little agreement about what lesson is to be learned from his critique, and provide little exegesis of how his argument proceeds. I fill this exegetical gap. I show that the Gestaltist’s fundamental error is to reify forms as transcendent realities, rather than treating them as phenomena of perceptual consciousness. From this, reductivist errors follow. The essay serves not only as a (...) helpful guide through parts of The Structure of Behavior for newcomers, but also offers a corrective to recent trends in philosophy of mind. Such influential commentators as Hubert Dreyfus, Taylor Carmen, and Evan Thompson have, I argue, risked serious misunderstanding of Merleau-Ponty’s view, by mistakenly treating “circular causality” as central to Merleau-Ponty’s own acausal view of forms. -/- [The version archived at Philpapers is closer to the author's preferred format. Formatting requirements in the published version make the section/subsection hierarchy needlessly difficult to follow. There are some changes to content in the published version. Please cite only the published version.]. (shrink)

There are two main approaches in the phenomenological understanding of the unconscious. The first explores the intentional theory of the unconscious, while the second develops a non-representational way of understanding consciousness and the unconscious. This paper aims to outline a general theoretical framework for the non-representational approach to the unconscious within the phenomenological tradition. In order to do so, I focus on three relevant theories: Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, Thomas Fuchs’ phenomenology of body memory, and Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology (...) of affectivity. Both Merleau-Ponty and Fuchs understand the unconscious as a “sedimented practical schema” of subjective being in the world. This sedimented unconscious contributes to the way we implicitly interpret reality, fill in the gaps of uncertainty, and invest our social interactions with meaning. Husserl, however, approaches the unconscious in terms of affective non-vivacity, as a sphere of sedimentation and the horizon of the distant past which stays affectively connected to the living present. Drawing on these ideas, I argue that these two accounts can reinforce one another and provide the ground for a phenomenological understanding of the unconscious in terms of the horizontal dimension of subjective experience and a non-representational relation to the past. (shrink)

Until now post-structuralism is widely regarded as an opposite to phenomenology. This is also true for the relation of Butler’s post-structuralism and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. The aim of this paper is to show how close they are to each other. For this purpose, I will focus on Butler’s poststructuralist theory of performativity to confront it with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theory of expression. While Butler accuses theories of expression of being essentialist, I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s theory of experience resists such (...) a criticism. “Expressivity” and “performativity”, and thus phenomenology and post-structuralism, are not opposites but partners in the search for an anti-essentialist concept. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology was particularly influential for a number of French philosophers and their theories. Two of the most prominent French thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, turned to the instruments offered by phenomenology in their attempts to understand the notions of the body, consciousness, imagination, human being, world and many others. Both philosophers also provided their definitions of perception, but they understood this notion in very different ways. The paper describes selected aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology that were adopted by Sartre (...) and Merleau-Ponty and depicts the presumptions of their respective theories of perception, as well as the differences between them. The main thesis presented here is that theories as different as those proposed by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty may, and indeed do, lead to the same conclusion, i.e. that perception represents a different form of cognition. Despite the differences between these theories, they can both be placed in the contemporary context of phenomenological research carried out by cognitive philosophers Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher, as well as by the proponent of the enactive theory of perception, Alva Noë. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty not only published in the fields of phenomenology, aesthetics, politics, and linguistics, but he also lectured as professor of child psychology, which resulted in several texts specifically devoted to the child. Most notably are the works “The Child’s Relations to Others,” Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language, and Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures, 1949–1952. And yet the question of the child occurs throughout his entire corpus. Thus, it is quite difficult to limit Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of childhood (...) to one given text or theme. Merleau-Ponty is adamant, however, that his work in psychology and philosophy should not be viewed as separate projects. Rather, he repeatedly stresses an intertwining of philosophy and psychology, self and other, theory and praxis, and the lasting influence of childhood on adult life. In this vein, the following texts, both from his “philosophical” and “psychological” works, provide a sense of the significance the child plays in Merleau-Ponty’s overarching project, particularly in his account of intersubjectivity and the parent-child relation. (shrink)

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing as embodied experience. (...) In the process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty's notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper's theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher's voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)

A theory of the first-person plural occupies a unique place in philosophical investigations into intersubjectivity and social cognition. In order for the referent of the first-person plural—“the We”—to come into existence, it seems there must be a shared ground of communicative possibility, but this requires a non-circular explanation of how this ground could be shared in the absence of a pre-existing context of communicative conventions. Margaret Gilbert’s and John Searle’s theories of collective intentionality capture important aspects of the (...) We, but fail to fully account for this shared ground of communicative possibility. This paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeity helps reconcile the positive aspects of these accounts while also explaining how the genesis of the social world is continuous with perceptual life in general. This enables an account of the first-person plural as dependent on reciprocal communicative interaction without the need to posit a primitive or primordial “we-mode” of consciousness. “Intercorporeity” designates a bodily openness to others that is not fundamentally different in kind from the general style of bodily comportment found in Merleau-Ponty’s rich analyses of perceptual life. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's reference to "a past which has never been present" at the end of "Le sentir" challenges the typical framework of the Phenomenology of Perception, with its primacy of perception and bodily field of presence. In light of this "original past," I propose a re-reading of the prepersonal as ground of perception that precedes the dichotomies of subject-object and activity-passivity. Merleau-Ponty searches in the Phenomenology for language to describe this ground, borrowing from multiple registers (notably Bergson, but also Husserl). This (...) "sensory life" is a coexistence of sensing and sensible—bodily and worldly—rhythms. Perception is, then, not a natural given, but a temporal process of synchronization between rhythms. By drawing on Bergson, this can be described as a process in which virtual life is actualized into perceiving subject and object perceived. Significantly, this process involves non-coincidence or delay whereby sensory life is always already past for perception. (shrink)

This is an advanced introduction to and original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's greatest work, Phenomenology of Perception. Timothy Mooney provides a clear and compelling exposition of the theory of our projective being in the world, and demonstrates as never before the centrality of the body schema in the theory. Thanks to the schema's motor intentionality our bodies inhabit and appropriate space: our postures and perceptual fields are organised schematically when we move to realise our projects. Thus our lived bodies (...) are ineliminably expressive in being both animated and outcome oriented through-and-through. Mooney also analyses the place of the work in the modern philosophical world, showing what Merleau-Ponty takes up from the Kantian and Phenomenological traditions and what he contributes to each. Casting a fresh light on his magnum opus, this book is essential reading for all those interested in the philosophy and phenomenology of the body. (shrink)

This article is about young children’s morality and their concern for others’ wellbeing. Questions of what the value of others’ wellbeing can signify, how this value becomes visible to children and how it is expressed in their interaction will be posed. In this analysis, children’s commitment to others’ wellbeing is discussed in terms of two theories, namely the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of intersubjectivity and the psychologist Martin Hoffman’s theory of empathy. The interaction between children and adults (...) in pre-school, drawn from different studies of morality, constitutes the empirical basis. In the discussion, it is claimed that children’s care for others’ wellbeing can be understood in a fruitful way as experiences of, approaches to and ways of being involved in the other’s life-world rather than as expressions of empathy. (shrink)

What bearing did the works of Whitehead have on the late Merleau-Ponty and his emerging ontology of flesh? When gauged by analysis of citations alone, Whitehead’s influence on Merleau-Ponty appears to be a brief and minor encounter. However, despite the paucity of explicit reference to Whitehead, there is an argument to be made that Whitehead’s philosophy played a pivotal role in the development of Merleau-Ponty’s late thought. This can be understood in relation to Whitehead’s theory of education, which consists (...) of three stages: romance, precision, and generalization. It will also be shown how Whitehead’s theory of education corresponds to Merleau-Ponty’s incomplete phenomenological reduction. From this, we are provided with access to a metaphenomenological reading of Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre, which can be understood as an ongoing movement between phenomenology and ontology, a movement in which Whitehead’s thought played a significant—if largely “invisible”—role. (shrink)

Our objective is to corroborate Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of speech perception and intersubjectivity through an analysis of A. R. Luria's account of semantic aphasia. By emulating Merleau-Ponty's style of analysis in dealing with the work of a contemporary leader in the field of aphasiology, we are able to take up Merleau-Ponty's thought and test whether his conclusions are inevitable or whether they are based on outmoded problems of the psychology and psychopathology of his day. These reflections also enable us to (...) present arguments against both the assumptions of the natural attitude, as well as those of transcendental phenomenology, and so enable us to cast some light on the relation between existential phenomenology and empirical research. By contrasting aphasic and normal perception, we intend to show that ultimately even the aphasiologist is able to characterize aphasic perception only in terms of the aphasic's loss of an "openness" to meanings present in the uttered sounds. We argue that this notion of openness, like that of Merleau-Ponty's notion of "perceptual faith, " requires the reduction but also points to the impossibility of a complete reduction. (shrink)

Self-mutilation is generally seen only as a negative response to trauma. But when trauma cannot be expressed, other forms of communication become necessary. As gestural communication, self-mutilation can reorganize and stabilize the trauma victim's world, providing a "voice on the skin" when the actual voice is forbidden. This is a plausible extension of Merleau-Ponty's gestural theory of language, and an interesting comment on his notion of "reversibility" as essential to linguistic communication.

Shannon Sullivan's critique of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is based on the argument that, due to his concept of the “anonymous body,” his theory of intersubjectivity omits the particularities of bodies, such as gender. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's “anonymous body” is not in fact “neutral” as Sullivan suggests, and moreover that he does not ignore differences but rather provides us with the idea of difference as a process of differentiation. Additionally, I argue that Sullivan's concept of “hypothetical construction,” (...) which is introduced as an alternative to Merleau-Ponty, turns out to be a conscious construction, not reflecting upon its very conditions. Thus, Sullivan's account fails by presupposing what in fact needs to be explained: the particularities. (shrink)

: Shannon Sullivan's critique of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is based on the argument that, due to his concept of the "anonymous body," his theory of intersubjectivity omits the particularities of bodies, such as gender. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's "anonymous body" (le corps phénoménal) is not in fact "neutral" as Sullivan suggests, and moreover that he does not ignore differences but rather provides us with the idea of difference as a process of differentiation. Additionally, I argue that Sullivan's (...) concept of "hypothetical construction," which is introduced as an alternative to Merleau-Ponty, turns out to be a conscious construction, not reflecting upon its very conditions. Thus, Sullivan's account fails by presupposing what in fact needs to be explained: the particularities. (shrink)

I examine the phenomenological philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre as possible responses to contemporary studies of interpersonal relatedness in cognitive science, especially the experimental studies of infant's imitating simple facial gestures of adults. I discuss the implications and the challenges raised by the experimental studies to the dominant phenomenological accounts of intersubjectivity, but also envision how phenomenology may help to interpret the findings about infantile imitation in ways that favor the embodied perceptual connectedness between the self and the other, (...) without recourse to the inner private mind postulate endorsed by the theory of mind and shared by the experimental researchers of imitation. (shrink)

Perception and expression are compared and contrasted as constituent parts of a semiotic system. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological method of 1) description, 2) reduction, And 3) intentionality is analyzed as a synergic function for perception and expression. Perception is understood as the interplay of immanent and transcendent signs which signify a phenomenal presence. Expression is examined as the synthesis of "le langage," "la langue," and "la parole." then, Expression is viewed in its two modalities as 1) existential and 2) empirical speech. Finally, (...) Merleau-Ponty's theory of communication or theory of intercorporeal being is drawn from the semiotic common ground of his theories of perception and expression. Hence, A single theory of signs is advanced to explain the synergism of intrapersonal and interpersonal being. (shrink)

An investigation of the eidetic and transcendental phenomenological reductions as productive (and not merely descriptive) activities, Hence as a praxis generative of meaning. The eidetic reduction is a metaphoric system, Describing the movement from topos to tropes: the primal ontological structure is found to be that of distortion, Of a "coherent deformation," a breaking of forms, Which maintains the phenomenological horizon's openness. This founds a theory of decentered being, Ex-Centric subjectivity, And an anti-Ideologic critique.

In this article I examine the relation between the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze by looking at the way in which they refer to Henri Bergson’s time theory. Although Merleau-Ponty develops some fundamental Bergsonian insights on the nature of time, he presents himself as a critical reader of the latter. I will show that although Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Bergson differs fundamentally from Deleuze’s interpretation, Merleau-Ponty’s “corrections” of Bergson’s theory fit Deleuze’s reading of Bergson very well. This (...) indicates a similarity with respect to what is at stake in the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. Hence the critical reference that Deleuze makes to Merleau-Ponty’s conception of cinema and thus of movement is not justified, but is the result of a selective and prototypical reading of the early Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are stored, not as representations in the mind, (...) but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are “stored”, not as representations in the mind, (...) but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

In Dynamis. Ontologia dell’incommensurabile, Gaetano Chiurazzi offers an account of the philosophical sense and implications of the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes in ancient thought. In his study, Chiurazzi presents the scope of the idea of incommensurability in contrast to those theories that have interpreted perception as the primary access to reality. Chiurazzi claims that the discovery of incommensurable relations, such as that of “1/square root of 2,” which expresses the relation between the side and the diagonal of a square, introduces (...) the conception of asymmetrical relations into Western epistemology and ontology. This conception finds in the modern idea of transcendental philosophy its mature formulation. In this paper, I draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s proposal of a phenomenology of perception in order to critically evaluate the working assumption in Chiurazzi’s account that perception is the faculty of intuition that seizes upon the individual and therefore as “atomic” in nature. (shrink)

Miroir, miroir de mes désirsAu seuil de la réversibilité, la libido ardente des imagesEn parcourant les perspectives de Lacan, Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, je me propose de montrer comment l’image – une image dont le rôle, depuis Platon, a été réduit par la métaphysique occidentale à celui de simple copie – rend possible une pensée nouvelle non dualiste, une pensée ouverte par le désir, c’est-à-dire par ce qui dépasse tout dualisme simpliste et qui trouve dans l’image sa voie privilégiée.L’image du miroir (...) – considérée par le platonisme comme le simulacre par excellence, comme l’emblème de la copie déformante et trompeuse d’un modèle originaire harmonieux – donne à voir bien plus qu’elle ne nous montre : comme Lacan le remarquait dans son célèbre essai de 1949, devant le miroir, nous nous découvrons, comme les enfants, sujets du monde, mais aussi, inévitablement, sujets au monde. Le «je» – dont nous sommes in-formés par l’image du miroir – s’abîme, par cette même image, dans les l’inquiétante étrangété de l’autre, et par suite dans les gorges insondables de son désir. Si l’image du miroir nous permet d’embrasser la totalité de notre corps et d’apprécier en un regard notre statut de sujet, ce regard nous est toutefois restitué – aveugle et insistant – sous la forme d’un objet partiel qui nous interpelle comme sujets désubjectivés, comme sujets castrés, ou encore comme simples « taches » dans lapeinture du monde. L’image fixée par l’enfant dans le miroir fonde, paradoxalement, l’idée traditionnelle du sujet comme pôle dynamique de la relation je-monde. Comme le remarque Slavoj Žižek, en commentant Lacan, la capacité dynamique du sujet se fonde en somme sur une fixation excessive de l’image du sujet lui-même, fixation qui trouve son origine absente dans le regard entendu comme objet a, c’est-à-dire comme point aveugle de la conscience, lieu d’acquisition et de perte qui, par la castration du sujet, ouvre la plaie libidineuse et pulsionnelle de l’inconscient et renverse par là le désir de l’homme en désir de l’autre, comme le rappelle une célèbre formule de Lacan.Longtemps considérées comme porteuses d’illusions, comme l’illusion en tant que telle, les images nous montrent en fait la vérité de cette illusion : le monde est déformation et réversibilité, et nous-mêmes, prétendus sujets faisant face à son tableau inerte, n’en sommes que des taches. Au cours des mêmes années durant lesquelles Lacan élabore une théorie du regard, Merleau-Ponty, son interlocuteur direct – qui se réfère lui aussi au comportement de l’enfant devant le miroir – réfléchit sur la question du « en-être », c’est-à-dire de la réversibilité de la chair, ce tissu de différences qui nous constitue – les animaux et les choses – comme autant de plis d’un horizon commun. Pour Merleau-Ponty comme pour Lacan, dans une telle perspective, le sujet ne se défi nit pas positivement, mais comme écart par rapport à lui-même, comme coupure dans la peau de la conscience, comme plaie ouverte sur l’inconscient et sur le désir qui en jaillit abondamment. Ainsi, voir dans le miroir que, comme disait le poète, « je est un autre », implique que l’image soit libérée de son statut dévalorisant de « seconde chose » hérité du platonisme. Cela inaugure, en fait, une pensée sans dualisme. Gilles Deleuze travaillera lui aussi dans ce sens, lorsqu’il théorisera un renversement du platonisme à partir des images, dans son essai de 1966 Renverser le platonisme.Historiquement, le commencement de la philosophie a coïncidé avec la recherche d’une origine, d’une archè. Mais un monde où les relations nées du désir tracent des itinéraires imprévisibles, où le je et l’autre ne se distinguent plus, où sujet et objet ne connaissent plus de frontière, où la copie cesse de présupposer le modèle, un monde ainsi fait, a-t-il encore une origine accessible? Confronté à cette question essentielle, Merleau-Ponty théorisera – une fois encore à partir de la vision –, au lieu d’une origine en soi préétablie, un originaire en perpétuelle explosion. De son côté, Deleuze élaborera quelque chose d’analogue, à partir de la réflexion sur le cinéma qui l’occupera dans les années 1980 : il « encapsulera » les extases temporelles dans une image-miroir, une concrétion cristalline à plusieurs facettes où le monde se différencie sans cesse, dans un éternel retour.Mirror, Mirror of my DesiresOn the Threshold of Reversibility, the libidic Passion of ImagesIn a journey through the perspectives of Lacan, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, I shall show how images – the images that from Plato on have been relegated by Western metaphysics to the role of mere copies – allow us to trace the direction of a new and non-dualistic thought, a direction opened up by desire, that is to say, by something exceeding any simplistic dualism and fi nding precisely in images its privileged channel.The specular image – conceived by Platonism as the simulacrum par excellence, as the emblem of the deforming, deceiving copy of a harmonious preliminarymodel – makes us see more than it actually shows: as Lacan remarked in a renowned essay published in 1949, since childhood, in front of the mirror, we discover ourselves as subjects of the world, but also – and inevitably – as subjected to the world. The ego – of which we are in-formed by the specular image – is turned, through that very image, into the obscure, uncanny chasm of the other, and, consequently, in the unfathomable vortex of the other’s desire. Indeed, if in the mirror we can embrace the whole of our body and catch with a single gaze its status of subject, by the mirror that very gaze is however returned – blind and insistent – as a partial object summoning us as desubjectivized subjects, as castrated subjects, namely, as mere “stains” in the picture of the world. Quite paradoxically, the image fixed by the child in the mirror founds the traditional idea of the subject conceived as the dinamic pole of the relation between the ego and the world. In short, as Slavoj Žižek remarks commenting on Lacan, the dinamic capability of the subject is grounded on an excessive fixation of the image of the subject itself, fixation which finds its absent origin in the gaze meant as object a, namely, meant as that blind point of consciousness, that point of acquisition and loss which, by castrating the subject, opens the acies of the libidically throbbing wound of the unconscious and turns, to borrow a renowed Lacanian expression, man’s desire into the other’s desire.For long considered to herald illusions, images show us the truth of illusion itself: the world is deformation and reversibility and we – presumed subjects in front of its inert picture – are, on the contrary, its “stains.” In the same years in which Lacan was elaborating a theory of gaze, Merleau-Ponty, who was then a direct interlocutor of his, was articulating – by referring, as Lacan did, to the child’s behaviour in front of the mirror – a series of important reflections over the problem of the en-être, that is to say, over the problem of the reversibility of flesh, i. e., that differential fabric constituting us – animals and things – as variegated gatherings of a common horizon. For Merleau-Ponty, as well as for Lacan, according to such a perspective, the subject, far from being defined in a positive way, is defined by a gap in relation with its own self, that is to say, by a cut in the skin of consciousness, by a wound opening to the unconscious and to the desire spurting abundantly from the subconscious.To see in the mirror that, as the poet said, “I am an Other,” is to free images from the status of “second things” with which Platonism had dismissed them; it is, in other words, to inaugurate a non-dualistic thought. For his part, Deleuze will also engage in the same direction by theorizing a reversing of Platonism from the very standpoint of images in his 1966 essay Renverser le platonisme.The beginning of philosophy has historically matched with the search for an origin, namely, an arké. But in a world in which the relations inaugurated by desire trace unpredictable itineraries, in a world in which the ego and the other can no longer be distinguished, in a world in which the subject and the object know no more boundary lines, in a world in which model and copy cease to exist as the presupposition of one another, in such a world, I said, is it still possible to find an origin? By measuring himself with such a crucial question, Merleau-Ponty will theorize – once again from the standpoint of vision – an “originating in perennial explosion” instead of a narrow, pregiven origin. For his part, Deleuze will elaborate something similar in his reflection on cinema, which will keep him busy in the first half of the eighties, by capsulating the temporal dimensions in a mirror-image, i. e., a crystalline concretion in whose facets the world perennially becomes in an eternal differential return. (shrink)

Miroir, miroir de mes désirsAu seuil de la réversibilité, la libido ardente des imagesEn parcourant les perspectives de Lacan, Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, je me propose de montrer comment l’image – une image dont le rôle, depuis Platon, a été réduit par la métaphysique occidentale à celui de simple copie – rend possible une pensée nouvelle non dualiste, une pensée ouverte par le désir, c’est-à-dire par ce qui dépasse tout dualisme simpliste et qui trouve dans l’image sa voie privilégiée.L’image du miroir (...) – considérée par le platonisme comme le simulacre par excellence, comme l’emblème de la copie déformante et trompeuse d’un modèle originaire harmonieux – donne à voir bien plus qu’elle ne nous montre : comme Lacan le remarquait dans son célèbre essai de 1949, devant le miroir, nous nous découvrons, comme les enfants, sujets du monde, mais aussi, inévitablement, sujets au monde. Le «je» – dont nous sommes in-formés par l’image du miroir – s’abîme, par cette même image, dans les l’inquiétante étrangété de l’autre, et par suite dans les gorges insondables de son désir. Si l’image du miroir nous permet d’embrasser la totalité de notre corps et d’apprécier en un regard notre statut de sujet, ce regard nous est toutefois restitué – aveugle et insistant – sous la forme d’un objet partiel (objet a) qui nous interpelle comme sujets désubjectivés, comme sujets castrés, ou encore comme simples « taches » dans lapeinture du monde. L’image fixée par l’enfant dans le miroir fonde, paradoxalement, l’idée traditionnelle du sujet comme pôle dynamique de la relation je-monde. Comme le remarque Slavoj Žižek, en commentant Lacan, la capacité dynamique du sujet se fonde en somme sur une fixation excessive de l’image du sujet lui-même, fixation qui trouve son origine absente dans le regard entendu comme objet a, c’est-à-dire comme point aveugle de la conscience, lieu d’acquisition et de perte qui, par la castration du sujet, ouvre la plaie libidineuse et pulsionnelle de l’inconscient et renverse par là le désir de l’homme en désir de l’autre, comme le rappelle une célèbre formule de Lacan.Longtemps considérées comme porteuses d’illusions, comme l’illusion en tant que telle, les images nous montrent en fait la vérité de cette illusion : le monde est déformation et réversibilité, et nous-mêmes, prétendus sujets faisant face à son tableau inerte, n’en sommes que des taches. Au cours des mêmes années durant lesquelles Lacan élabore une théorie du regard, Merleau-Ponty, son interlocuteur direct – qui se réfère lui aussi au comportement de l’enfant devant le miroir – réfléchit sur la question du « en-être », c’est-à-dire de la réversibilité de la chair, ce tissu de différences qui nous constitue – les animaux et les choses – comme autant de plis d’un horizon commun. Pour Merleau-Ponty comme pour Lacan, dans une telle perspective, le sujet ne se défi nit pas positivement, mais comme écart par rapport à lui-même, comme coupure dans la peau de la conscience, comme plaie ouverte sur l’inconscient et sur le désir qui en jaillit abondamment. Ainsi, voir dans le miroir que, comme disait le poète, « je est un autre », implique que l’image soit libérée de son statut dévalorisant de « seconde chose » hérité du platonisme. Cela inaugure, en fait, une pensée sans dualisme. Gilles Deleuze travaillera lui aussi dans ce sens, lorsqu’il théorisera un renversement du platonisme à partir des images, dans son essai de 1966 Renverser le platonisme.Historiquement, le commencement de la philosophie a coïncidé avec la recherche d’une origine, d’une archè. Mais un monde où les relations nées du désir tracent des itinéraires imprévisibles, où le je et l’autre ne se distinguent plus, où sujet et objet ne connaissent plus de frontière, où la copie cesse de présupposer le modèle, un monde ainsi fait, a-t-il encore une origine accessible? Confronté à cette question essentielle, Merleau-Ponty théorisera – une fois encore à partir de la vision –, au lieu d’une origine en soi préétablie, un originaire en perpétuelle explosion. De son côté, Deleuze élaborera quelque chose d’analogue, à partir de la réflexion sur le cinéma qui l’occupera dans les années 1980 : il « encapsulera » les extases temporelles dans une image-miroir, une concrétion cristalline à plusieurs facettes où le monde se différencie sans cesse, dans un éternel retour.Mirror, Mirror of my DesiresOn the Threshold of Reversibility, the libidic Passion of ImagesIn a journey through the perspectives of Lacan, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, I shall show how images – the images that from Plato on have been relegated by Western metaphysics to the role of mere copies – allow us to trace the direction of a new and non-dualistic thought, a direction opened up by desire, that is to say, by something exceeding any simplistic dualism and fi nding precisely in images its privileged channel.The specular image – conceived by Platonism as the simulacrum par excellence, as the emblem of the deforming, deceiving copy of a harmonious preliminarymodel – makes us see more than it actually shows: as Lacan remarked in a renowned essay published in 1949, since childhood, in front of the mirror, we discover ourselves as subjects of the world, but also – and inevitably – as subjected to the world. The ego – of which we are in-formed by the specular image – is turned, through that very image, into the obscure, uncanny chasm of the other, and, consequently, in the unfathomable vortex of the other’s desire. Indeed, if in the mirror we can embrace the whole of our body and catch with a single gaze its status of subject, by the mirror that very gaze is however returned – blind and insistent – as a partial object (objet a) summoning us as desubjectivized subjects, as castrated subjects ($), namely, as mere “stains” in the picture of the world. Quite paradoxically, the image fixed by the child in the mirror founds the traditional idea of the subject conceived as the dinamic pole of the relation between the ego and the world. In short, as Slavoj Žižek remarks commenting on Lacan, the dinamic capability of the subject is grounded on an excessive fixation of the image of the subject itself, fixation which finds its absent origin in the gaze meant as object a, namely, meant as that blind point of consciousness, that point of acquisition and loss which, by castrating the subject, opens the acies of the libidically throbbing wound of the unconscious and turns, to borrow a renowed Lacanian expression, man’s desire into the other’s desire.For long considered to herald illusions, images show us the truth of illusion itself: the world is deformation and reversibility and we – presumed subjects in front of its inert picture – are, on the contrary, its “stains.” In the same years in which Lacan was elaborating a theory of gaze, Merleau-Ponty, who was then a direct interlocutor of his, was articulating – by referring, as Lacan did, to the child’s behaviour in front of the mirror – a series of important reflections over the problem of the en-être, that is to say, over the problem of the reversibility of flesh, i. e., that differential fabric constituting us – animals and things – as variegated gatherings of a common horizon. For Merleau-Ponty, as well as for Lacan, according to such a perspective, the subject, far from being defined in a positive way, is defined by a gap in relation with its own self, that is to say, by a cut in the skin of consciousness, by a wound opening to the unconscious and to the desire spurting abundantly from the subconscious.To see in the mirror that, as the poet said, “I am an Other,” is to free images from the status of “second things” with which Platonism had dismissed them; it is, in other words, to inaugurate a non-dualistic thought. For his part, Deleuze will also engage in the same direction by theorizing a reversing of Platonism from the very standpoint of images in his 1966 essay Renverser le platonisme.The beginning of philosophy has historically matched with the search for an origin, namely, an arké. But in a world in which the relations inaugurated by desire trace unpredictable itineraries, in a world in which the ego and the other can no longer be distinguished, in a world in which the subject and the object know no more boundary lines, in a world in which model and copy cease to exist as the presupposition of one another, in such a world, I said, is it still possible to find an origin? By measuring himself with such a crucial question, Merleau-Ponty will theorize – once again from the standpoint of vision – an “originating in perennial explosion” instead of a narrow, pregiven origin. For his part, Deleuze will elaborate something similar (similar in a Deleuzian way, of course, that is to say, similar from the standpoint of a basic difference) in his reflection on cinema, which will keep him busy in the first half of the eighties, by capsulating the temporal dimensions in a mirror-image, i. e., a crystalline concretion in whose facets the world perennially becomes in an eternal differential return. (shrink)

Miroir, miroir de mes désirsAu seuil de la réversibilité, la libido ardente des imagesEn parcourant les perspectives de Lacan, Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, je me propose de montrer comment l’image – une image dont le rôle, depuis Platon, a été réduit par la métaphysique occidentale à celui de simple copie – rend possible une pensée nouvelle non dualiste, une pensée ouverte par le désir, c’est-à-dire par ce qui dépasse tout dualisme simpliste et qui trouve dans l’image sa voie privilégiée.L’image du miroir (...) – considérée par le platonisme comme le simulacre par excellence, comme l’emblème de la copie déformante et trompeuse d’un modèle originaire harmonieux – donne à voir bien plus qu’elle ne nous montre : comme Lacan le remarquait dans son célèbre essai de 1949, devant le miroir, nous nous découvrons, comme les enfants, sujets du monde, mais aussi, inévitablement, sujets au monde. Le «je» – dont nous sommes in-formés par l’image du miroir – s’abîme, par cette même image, dans les l’inquiétante étrangété de l’autre, et par suite dans les gorges insondables de son désir. Si l’image du miroir nous permet d’embrasser la totalité de notre corps et d’apprécier en un regard notre statut de sujet, ce regard nous est toutefois restitué – aveugle et insistant – sous la forme d’un objet partiel (objet a) qui nous interpelle comme sujets désubjectivés, comme sujets castrés, ou encore comme simples « taches » dans lapeinture du monde. L’image fixée par l’enfant dans le miroir fonde, paradoxalement, l’idée traditionnelle du sujet comme pôle dynamique de la relation je-monde. Comme le remarque Slavoj Žižek, en commentant Lacan, la capacité dynamique du sujet se fonde en somme sur une fixation excessive de l’image du sujet lui-même, fixation qui trouve son origine absente dans le regard entendu comme objet a, c’est-à-dire comme point aveugle de la conscience, lieu d’acquisition et de perte qui, par la castration du sujet, ouvre la plaie libidineuse et pulsionnelle de l’inconscient et renverse par là le désir de l’homme en désir de l’autre, comme le rappelle une célèbre formule de Lacan.Longtemps considérées comme porteuses d’illusions, comme l’illusion en tant que telle, les images nous montrent en fait la vérité de cette illusion : le monde est déformation et réversibilité, et nous-mêmes, prétendus sujets faisant face à son tableau inerte, n’en sommes que des taches. Au cours des mêmes années durant lesquelles Lacan élabore une théorie du regard, Merleau-Ponty, son interlocuteur direct – qui se réfère lui aussi au comportement de l’enfant devant le miroir – réfléchit sur la question du « en-être », c’est-à-dire de la réversibilité de la chair, ce tissu de différences qui nous constitue – les animaux et les choses – comme autant de plis d’un horizon commun. Pour Merleau-Ponty comme pour Lacan, dans une telle perspective, le sujet ne se défi nit pas positivement, mais comme écart par rapport à lui-même, comme coupure dans la peau de la conscience, comme plaie ouverte sur l’inconscient et sur le désir qui en jaillit abondamment. Ainsi, voir dans le miroir que, comme disait le poète, « je est un autre », implique que l’image soit libérée de son statut dévalorisant de « seconde chose » hérité du platonisme. Cela inaugure, en fait, une pensée sans dualisme. Gilles Deleuze travaillera lui aussi dans ce sens, lorsqu’il théorisera un renversement du platonisme à partir des images, dans son essai de 1966 Renverser le platonisme.Historiquement, le commencement de la philosophie a coïncidé avec la recherche d’une origine, d’une archè. Mais un monde où les relations nées du désir tracent des itinéraires imprévisibles, où le je et l’autre ne se distinguent plus, où sujet et objet ne connaissent plus de frontière, où la copie cesse de présupposer le modèle, un monde ainsi fait, a-t-il encore une origine accessible? Confronté à cette question essentielle, Merleau-Ponty théorisera – une fois encore à partir de la vision –, au lieu d’une origine en soi préétablie, un originaire en perpétuelle explosion. De son côté, Deleuze élaborera quelque chose d’analogue, à partir de la réflexion sur le cinéma qui l’occupera dans les années 1980 : il « encapsulera » les extases temporelles dans une image-miroir, une concrétion cristalline à plusieurs facettes où le monde se différencie sans cesse, dans un éternel retour.Mirror, Mirror of my DesiresOn the Threshold of Reversibility, the libidic Passion of ImagesIn a journey through the perspectives of Lacan, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, I shall show how images – the images that from Plato on have been relegated by Western metaphysics to the role of mere copies – allow us to trace the direction of a new and non-dualistic thought, a direction opened up by desire, that is to say, by something exceeding any simplistic dualism and fi nding precisely in images its privileged channel.The specular image – conceived by Platonism as the simulacrum par excellence, as the emblem of the deforming, deceiving copy of a harmonious preliminarymodel – makes us see more than it actually shows: as Lacan remarked in a renowned essay published in 1949, since childhood, in front of the mirror, we discover ourselves as subjects of the world, but also – and inevitably – as subjected to the world. The ego – of which we are in-formed by the specular image – is turned, through that very image, into the obscure, uncanny chasm of the other, and, consequently, in the unfathomable vortex of the other’s desire. Indeed, if in the mirror we can embrace the whole of our body and catch with a single gaze its status of subject, by the mirror that very gaze is however returned – blind and insistent – as a partial object (objet a) summoning us as desubjectivized subjects, as castrated subjects ($), namely, as mere “stains” in the picture of the world. Quite paradoxically, the image fixed by the child in the mirror founds the traditional idea of the subject conceived as the dinamic pole of the relation between the ego and the world. In short, as Slavoj Žižek remarks commenting on Lacan, the dinamic capability of the subject is grounded on an excessive fixation of the image of the subject itself, fixation which finds its absent origin in the gaze meant as object a, namely, meant as that blind point of consciousness, that point of acquisition and loss which, by castrating the subject, opens the acies of the libidically throbbing wound of the unconscious and turns, to borrow a renowed Lacanian expression, man’s desire into the other’s desire.For long considered to herald illusions, images show us the truth of illusion itself: the world is deformation and reversibility and we – presumed subjects in front of its inert picture – are, on the contrary, its “stains.” In the same years in which Lacan was elaborating a theory of gaze, Merleau-Ponty, who was then a direct interlocutor of his, was articulating – by referring, as Lacan did, to the child’s behaviour in front of the mirror – a series of important reflections over the problem of the en-être, that is to say, over the problem of the reversibility of flesh, i. e., that differential fabric constituting us – animals and things – as variegated gatherings of a common horizon. For Merleau-Ponty, as well as for Lacan, according to such a perspective, the subject, far from being defined in a positive way, is defined by a gap in relation with its own self, that is to say, by a cut in the skin of consciousness, by a wound opening to the unconscious and to the desire spurting abundantly from the subconscious.To see in the mirror that, as the poet said, “I am an Other,” is to free images from the status of “second things” with which Platonism had dismissed them; it is, in other words, to inaugurate a non-dualistic thought. For his part, Deleuze will also engage in the same direction by theorizing a reversing of Platonism from the very standpoint of images in his 1966 essay Renverser le platonisme.The beginning of philosophy has historically matched with the search for an origin, namely, an arké. But in a world in which the relations inaugurated by desire trace unpredictable itineraries, in a world in which the ego and the other can no longer be distinguished, in a world in which the subject and the object know no more boundary lines, in a world in which model and copy cease to exist as the presupposition of one another, in such a world, I said, is it still possible to find an origin? By measuring himself with such a crucial question, Merleau-Ponty will theorize – once again from the standpoint of vision – an “originating in perennial explosion” instead of a narrow, pregiven origin. For his part, Deleuze will elaborate something similar (similar in a Deleuzian way, of course, that is to say, similar from the standpoint of a basic difference) in his reflection on cinema, which will keep him busy in the first half of the eighties, by capsulating the temporal dimensions in a mirror-image, i. e., a crystalline concretion in whose facets the world perennially becomes in an eternal differential return. (shrink)

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing as embodied experience. In (...) the process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty’s notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper’s theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher’s voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)