Os primórdios da percepção na filosofia de Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

In this work, we try to develop the question of perception related to the notion of body and meaning in Merleau-Ponty s The Structure of Behaviour (1942). We Attempt to evaluate the way the author considers the problem of perception as a philosophical topic whose origin dates back to his first texts: Work project upon the nature of perception (1933) and Nature of Perception (1934) in which he states the importance of undertaking the matter of perception, specially the body perception. The Classical thinking assesses perception either as an empirical action or as an intellectual one. However Merleau-Ponty s proposal is to show that the action of perception is much deeper and wider than the overflying thought which explains the phenomenon of perception by disregarding the dialectical relation between body and soul, which means to leave out the perceptive subject s vital and existential dimension. Merleau-Ponty s falls back on Gestalttheorie to point out that perception is not a mere operation of the intellect, as it was supposed by the intellectualism. Thus the notions of the perception concept in an integrated way, that is the perception will be possible through a special figure-bottomed structure. This fact means that the matter of perception is related to the body and the meaning and it way be but into three orders: the physical, the vital and the human one. Our research has the purpose of showing that in Merleau-Ponty s view the perception with the help of the body as vehicle of man s being in the world is an origin experience which sets us in touch with concrete world structures, mostly social ones, and that makes the meaning of the perceptive experience possible.