Maurice Merleau-Ponty

[First paragraphs]: Einav Katan-Schmid’s thought-provoking new book, Embodied Philosophy of Dance, is composed of two related but at least partially separable components. Though the first (which dominates Part I of the book) contains original insights, most of it aligns with existing work in the reemerging philosophy of dance (including my own). This first component is, in essence, a hybrid dance theory derived from Katan-Schmid’s interpretations of central figures in the philosophical schools of phenomenology, hermeneutics and pragmatism (including Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Dewey). The second component, by contrast, is more original and provocative, and consists of Katan-Schmid’s analyses of choreographer Ohad Naharin’s Gaga method of movement research.  It is thus to this second component that I will thus devote most of the present review.  I will then conclude with a brief look at the recent biographical documentary on Naharin, entitled Mr. Gaga: A True Story of Love and Dance, focusing on elements that resonate with Embodied Philosophy of Dance.

Neste artigo, investigamos o informe, na obra de Hans Bellmer, como possibilidade de releitura da anamorfose a partir dos conceitos de diagrama e mancha, estudados por Kenneth Clark em seu texto "The blot and the diagram". Dessa maneira, analisamos a relação entre corpo e cenário, ao explorar como Bellmer busca no studium, conceito de Roland Barthes, gerar ambiguidades, subvertendo a iconografia dedicada ao erotismo e os limites entre o exterior e o interior. Com base nesses processos, examinamos como o informe se desdobra da anamorfose e o evocamos, na obra de Bellmer, como dúvida, no instante em que a perspectiva e a anatomia são colapsadas pelo diagrama e pela mancha, dos quais se originam elementos de ordem abstrata e figurativa.



In this article, we investigate the formless in Hans Bellmer's work as a possibility of re-reading the anamorphosis from the concepts of blot and diagram, studied by Kenneth Clark in his text "The blot and the diagram". In this sense, we analyze the relationship between body and scenery, exploring how Bellmer seeks to generate ambiguities through the studium-Roland Barthes' concept-, subverting the iconography dedicated to eroticism and the boundaries between exterior and interior. Based on these processes, we examine how the formless unfolds from the anamorphosis, in order to understand it as a doubt in Bellmer's work when perspective and anatomy are collapsed by the diagram and the blot, from which elements of abstract and figurative order originate.

Colloque en Sorbonne, 4-5 octobre 2019, "Les synesthésies : entre esthétique de la perception et phénomène intermédial"
L'intervention concerne une phénoménologie de la synesthésie, autorisant la construction d'un monde unifié (notion antique de Cosmos) sans principe transcendant, à partir du pouvoir perceptif et originaire du corps propre (Leib). Au programme: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Francis Ponge et Saint-John Perse.

-Vendredi 4 octobre 2019
Sorbonne, Bibliothèque Ascoli
17 rue de la Sorbonne, 75005 Paris
-Samedi 5 octobre 2019
Sorbonne, Amphithéâtre Milnes-Edwards
17 rue de la Sorbonne, 75005 Paris

Seneca's Medea tragedy alters Euripides' version both in depicting Medea's murders onstage, but also in splitting the two children's killings into two separate events. This article provides a diachronic and phenomenological close reading of the Medea character's choice to murder her second child in Seneca's tragedy, the ways in which Seneca's adaptation plays with audience expectations, the manuscript tradition of this play, and the character traits revealed by Seneca's choice to interrupt his Medea's crimes.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate how gender norms enter human bodily experience. My focus is not on the explicit ways in which social norms affect and constitute our relation to knowledge and the world but how these epistèmes become embodied, that is, become an assimilated part of our bodily experience. Gender, as a specific social norm, is of particular interest for a number of reasons. First, gender structures all domains of human social life: From matters of family, education, profes- sion, and public life. Second, gender is a norm that structures life not only in explicit ways (e.g., when one is directly addressed as or identifies oneself assertively as female, male, or other) but also in implicit ways and thereby operatively defines our sense of normality. Third, gender norms typically mirror existing power relations insofar as they represent forms of socio-political organization. Gender is not a norm that we are necessarily forced to obey or even naturally identify with, but it remains incorporated and acquired within concrete and repeated bodily experi- ences and practices.
In this way, the following analysis is inspired by Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. While Butler is well-known for her analysis of the discursive, I will probe the phenomenological potential of performativity by applying the analy-sis to the human body. Butler’s theory of gender performativity opens up the picture of social norms as a two-way street – not only do norms effect our language and discursive behaviors, but language must also enact (take up or appropriate) norms in order for them to be effective. This applies, as I will argue, also in the case of the human body. As material and lived bodies, we are situated in a historically and culturally- informed world, wherein norms manifest as well-ordered and typified social practices according to which we live. Yet, at the same time, we are practical agents insofar as we must bodily enact certain norms for them to be effective.

Η παρούσα εργασία  πραγματεύεται το ζήτημα της αρνητικής κριτικής που ασκεί ο Μερλώ-Ποντύ, τόσο στην φιλοσοφική παράδοση του εμπειρισμού όσο και σε αυτήν της νοησιαρχίας, όπως αυτή αναπτύσσεται στην εισαγωγή της φαινομενολογίας της αντίληψης. Ο εμπειρισμός και η νοησιαρχία συνιστούν τους δύο πόλους- τους οποίους θα μπορούσαμε να παρομοιάσουμε με την σκύλλα και τη χάρυβδη -, οι οποίοι αποτελούν τα θεμέλια για πολλές θεωρίες της αντίληψης της σημερινής εποχής. Εδώ θα δούμε, πώς ο Μερλώ-Ποντύ μέσα από την αρνητική κριτική που ασκεί στον εμπειρισμό και την νοησιαρχία, αλλά και μέσα από μια ριζική φαινομενολογική προσέγγιση, επιχειρεί να αποκαλύψει, κάτω από τις διάφορες στρώσεις της αντικειμενικής σκέψης, τόσο των ίδιων των επιστημών όσο και του κοινού νου, το πρωταρχικό εκείνο επίπεδο της εν-τω-κόσμω-είναι ενσώματης υποκειμενικότητάς μας, και έτσι να φωτίσει την απαρχή του θεωρητικού μας βίου, μαζί και του ίδιου του φιλοσοφικού στοχασμού.

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030293567

Bringing together established researchers and emerging scholars alike to discuss new readings of Husserl and to reignite the much needed discussion of what phenomenology actually is and can possibly be about, this volume sets out to critically re-evaluate (and challenge) the predominant interpretations of Husserl’s philosophy, and to adapt phenomenology to the specific philosophical challenges and context of the 21st century.

“What is phenomenology?”, Maurice Merleau-Ponty asks at the beginning of his Phenomenology of Perception – and he continues: “It may seem strange that this question still has to be asked half a century after the first works of Husserl. It is, however, far from being resolved.” Even today, more than half a century after Merleau-Ponty’s magnum opus, the answer is in many ways still up for grasp. While it may seem obvious that the main subject of phenomenological inquiry is, in fact, the subject, it is anything but self evident what this precisely implies: Considering the immense variety of different themes and methodological self-revisions found in Husserl’s philosophy – from its Brentanian beginnings to its transcendental re-interpretation and, last but not least, to its ‘crypto-deconstruction’  in the revisions of his early manuscripts and in his later work –, one cannot but acknowledge the fact that ‘the’ subject of phenomenology marks an irreducible plurality of possible subjects.




Paying tribute to this irreducible plurality the volume sets out to develop interpretative takes on the phenomenological tradition which transcend both its naive celebration and its brute rejection, to re-articulate the positions of other philosophers within the framework of Husserl’s thought, and to engage in an investigative dialogue between traditionally opposed camps within phenomenology and beyond.

Kralovič, J.: Towards to Application Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Perception by Picture Interpretation The aim of the paper is about possibility of application Merleau-Ponty's work on interpretation to picture and his reflection of painting and fine arts. This study present Merleau-Ponty's theory reflection of the visual character of our being, reflection mode of perception picture and Cézanne's painting. Structure of this text is inspire by metaphor language of Merleau-Ponty's work and draw on from his essays (The Visible and the Invisible, Eye and Mind and other essays) and relevant bibliography.

Kralovič, J.: The Philosophy of Perception in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Work The aim of the study is the analysis of the visual aspects of Merleau-Ponty's work. Text present Merleau-Ponty's theory of the body, perception and seeing. The study is analytical and theoretical text, the structure is composed of three main parts. Introduction to philosophy by Merleau-Ponty, summarization of relation between body and perception and third part is concerned on problem of visible.

Phenomenology is the study of subjectivity, consciousness, lived experience, or, more broadly, our relation to the world as sensing, feeling, thinking beings. Phenomenology arises in the history of philosophy in response to the problem of subjective experience and our relation to the world. We will begin our exploration of experience by tracing the roots of phenomenology's concern with experience to Descartes' skepticism, which introduces the idea that philosophy must begin with subjective, first-person experience (the ego, or "I") at the same time that it introduces the ego-centric dilemma, or the problem of the external world, and the mind body problem. We will spend the first part of the semester exploring how we experience the world and come to understand it through the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, who played a founding role in defining phenomenological method. In particular, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty transform Husserl's approach to phenomenology through art, which plays a special role in thinking about the nature of truth in relation to sensory experience. We will then turn to more contemporary approaches that reexamine phenomenological conceptions of embodied experience along the lines of gender, race, ethnicity, and ability. Lastly, we will explore consciousness and lived experience in relation to animal minds and the natural world. The guiding questions of this course are…

In my workshop, I will develop with the phenomenological help of Gaston Bachelard, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, David Michael Levin and Paul Claudel different possibilities of listening with one’s lived body. We will be especially exploring experientially, that is, phenomenologically the important and often hidden somatic connection between listening and breathing. We will ponder in theory and in praxis two questions: 1) How to become a great listener?” and 2) “How to become a great breather?” According to Bachelard, Levin and Claudel these two questions are intertwined. A great listener, in Bachelard’s and Claudel’s view, is capable to listen, in the first place, not the sounds, but the primordial silence of the world. Bachelard and Claudel connect this primordial silence with breathing. A great breather, in Bachelard’s view, is the one who is capable to breathe cosmically with one’s whole body. Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Levin think that listening is not only a capacity of our ears, but actually of our whole body. In relation to this, Claudel has suggested that our respiratory apparatus (like our lungs) have the potential capacity to hearken the primordially mysterious and atmospheric silence of the world. This potentiality often remains unrealized and undeveloped in our lives. In my workshop, we will be awakening within ourselves various hidden somatic ways of listening and breathing that will include experiential and mostly uncharted dimensions like 1) listening with one’s breath, 2) listening with one’s lungs, 3) listening with one’s breathing belly, 4) breathing with one’s ears, 5) listening and breathing with one’s spine, and 6) listening with one’s hands and feet in the atmosphere of breath. Through these various mysterious ways of listening and breathing we will experientially explore how we are given access to the sonorous and mute, spatial and temporal, private/hidden and social somatic dimensions of our lived bodies and the atmospheres surrounding them. This means that we will, for example, investigate how listening with one’s breath opens our inner somatic space of expansion and rhythmic time and what kind of intertwining of silence and sound we are given access to through the kinetic experience of spine. My workshop will give methods and practices for self-development and paths to travel toward becoming a “great listener” and a “great breather”.

Merleau-Ponty propone en su Fenomenología de la percepción la "Teoría
existencial de la historia" con la cual busca sacar al materialismo histórico de un reduccionismo, el de pretender definir el drama de la existencia por medio de significaciones puramente económicas. Para el autor francés existe un importante ámbito de libertad y de intereses individuales que también pueden influir en el rumbo histórico. Este ensayo hace un análisis histórico del siglo XX sobre el sentido económico e ideológico a partir de dicha teoría.

An essential characteristic of life as such is to create norms. To live means to the living being to normalize its relationship towards environment and itself. In the core of our presentation stands the thesis that normativity is a key factor to understand the essence of life and consciousness (conscious experience).
Through a phenomenological inquiry concerning normativity, I try to shed light on to the origins of conscious experience and immanent life of a living being. On the lower levels of life, on the level of animality, normativity means to choose and exclude, it is a question of life and death (often in a very literal sense). In a more general sense of the term: normativity means normalization of life; to articulate normal and abnormal ways of relationship of the living being towards itself and its environment. In this presentation I offer a comparative study of normativity of animal and human experience (and mind). In strong relationship with this, I attempt to explain one with the other, in order to highlight their fundamental differences and peculiarities. I would like to demarcate the essential levels of normativity (biological life without consciousness, animal beings with consciousness, human beings with self-consciousness), and set forth their basic structure. I’d like to approach lower levels of consciousness and normativity through a dismantling description of human mind, and – at the same time – relying on the phenomenologically reflected results of related researches of natural sciences.
In this comparative analysis of normativity (in experience) we have especially in mind two authors: Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The common point between these two philosophers (amongst others): the bodily, incarnated nature of subjectivity; the idea of bodily intentionality. The abstract relationship between consciousness and its object appears on a higher level in the more concrete form of the correlation of bodily subjectivity and its environment. It is the case in Husserl, and it is Merleau-Ponty’s point of departure. In Husserl which is particularly important for us is his account of instinctive intentionality and intersubjectivity.  According to Husserl, there are several levels of instinctive intentionality, and all of them are determined by the bodily and intersubjective nature of subjectivity. In his view the fundamental form of instinctive intentionality is instinct toward self-preservation – but there are several levels of self-preservation too. On the level of animality it is directed towards the preservation of physical self-objectivation of consciousness, on the level of humanity towards the preservation of cultural identity. In Merleau-Ponty which is especially important for us is his idea of the contextual character of bodily intentionality, that network of elements of the subjective and objective side of correlation mutually determines and interpenetrates each other. Furthermore, we will have in mind his late investigations concerning the phenomenon of entanglement – the intertwined nature of subjective and objective aspects of reality.
In my paper I would like to show how different levels of normativity emerge, and how do they interact with each other – on the basis of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but with a special regard to contemporary scientific researches.

La conception de l'oeuvre littéraire et artistique développée par Merleau-Ponty dans ses essais est rapprochée des principes de la critique thématique, qui voit dans les textes l'expression d'une expérience sensible unissant le sujet au monde et prenant la forme d'un "paysage"

Maurice Merleau -Ponty’s initial interpretation of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology is premised methodologically on a certain mythic perception of human embodiment – as the myth of human incarnation. Bodily intentionality cannot be as different from reflective intentionality as assumed typically. Merleau – Ponty resolved the problem of lived experience on an intuitional basis. Myth is implicated in the status of phenomenological claims around prereflective phenomena such as body’s intention as well as the important consequences over the naturalization of phenomenology. Mythic consciousness is found in Phenomenology of Perception and functions as the cardinal element in his resolution of that methodological problem. Furthermore, our study case will be oriented in the notion of flesh as central axis to both Peter Paul Rubens and Angelos Sikelianos’ perspective over Prometheus. Both Rubens and Sikelianos look to a poetic / artistic practice respectively by revealing multi-perspectival aspects of vision and visual experience (the invisible, absent, unseen) as constitutive of vision in the representation of Prometheus. Rubens and Sikelianos are interpreted according to the version of multi-perspectival vision and myth of incarnation that are articulated by Merleau – Ponty in the direction of de-localization of human vision. In addition, human embodiment incarnates its social conditions and then Rubens’ and Sikelianos’ Prometheus incarnates the element of fire as the principle element of life. Fire has been socially and culturally transformed and what Stephen Pyne calls the pyric transition enrolls the fireplace and the arson as tool of oppression. Prometheus is a symbol of life to human being and offer to humanity. Furthermore, through Rubens’ painting on Prometheus the universal context of perceptual experience is prioritized and makes visible the coextensive with human intercorporeal involvement. Prereflective corporeal phenomena are represented through the myth of incarnation. The dynamic sense of nature as the outer horizon of experience is traced toward the human dissalienation of which derives from the myth of human incarnation. In conclusion, corporeality and bodily intentionality in both Paul Rubens’ and Angelos Sikelianos’ perspective are symbolically mediated and require an epistemic priority to a certain form of mythic consciousness.

International Conference, "Myth and Art Revisited", Department of English Language and Literature, NKUA, Athens, Greece, 18-19 December, 2019
(forthcoming)

https://zjazdfilozoficzny.kul.pl/events/byt-jako-bycie-o-ontologicznych-aspektach-stylu/
XI Polski Zjazd Filozoficzny, KUL, Lublin, 9-14.09.2019

“Poruszający się obiekt – pisze Maurice Merleau-Ponty w “Fenomenologii percepcji” – jako przedmiot nieskończonej serii wyraźnych i zgodnych ze sobą postrzeżeń, ma własności, podczas gdy coś poruszającego się ma tylko pewien swój styl”. Tuż po tym uściśla, że chodzi mu o owo “coś” oraz o przysługujący mu ruch: “ruch nie zakłada koniecznie poruszającego się obiektu, to znaczy przedmiotu zdefiniowanego przez zespół określonych własności – wystarczy, że zawiera “coś nieokreślonego, co się porusza”, najwyżej “coś barwnego” albo “świecącego” bez wyraźnie określonej barwy czy jasności”. Filozof łączy go ponadto z pojęciami motywu i przechodzenia; mówi o tym, co jest czymś dopóki się dzieje. Inaczej mówiąc, takie coś, nie będąc hipostazą ze stałymi właściwościami, okazuje się wielce osobliwym bytem: jako byt właśnie może być co najmniej przedmiotem postrzeżenia i artykulacji, a zarazem przysługuje mu dynamika dziania się, wydarzania.

Powstaje tu jednak problem, jeżeli taką pośrednią formę bytu przymierza się do opisanej przez Martina Heideggera – niewątpliwie binarnej – różnicy ontologicznej, znamiennej dla tej tradycji filozofowania, którą Merleau-Ponty zdawał się kontynuować: jako dla wyłączonego środka nie ma dla niej tu miejsca.

Na gruncie terminologii spoza filozofii Heideggera i Merleau-Ponty’ego, owo “coś”, wymykające takiej binarności, dałoby się porównać do performatywu jako działania ziszczającego się w chwili swego wydarzania (odgłosy czego można byłoby znaleźć u Levinasa lub Derridy), a z drugiej strony – do Arystotelesowej dynamis, czyli, inaczej mówiąc, potentia, możności – bytu przed obleczeniem go w nadające się do precyzyjnej identyfikacji szaty stałości. Jednakże ze względu na brak owych szat, znalezienie w miarę skutecznego podejścia, pozwalającego taki byt opisać, wygląda na wyjątkowo trudne. Zdaje się jednak, iż zdawkowo przedstawiona przez Merleau-Ponty’ego sugestia na temat stylu może służyć za klucz do wyróżnienia takiej szczególnej postaci bytu. W tym właśnie kontekście – z rozważaniami Arystotelesa i Heideggera w tle – w proponowanym referacie zostanie przedstawiony “styl”.