Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Visual Perception as a Bodily Phenomenon

Simona Erjavec

Abstract

In her article the author focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of visual perception that arises from his original concept of the body which extends beyond the empiricist and intellectualist explanations of the body that rest upon Cartesian dualism. Instead, Merleau-Ponty discusses the live, active and cognizant body. He presents visual perception as a complex phenomenon which is neither completely objective nor completely subjective, but instead rooted deeply in the body schema which is of key importance for the understanding of space, depth and movement, i.e. phenomena that remain relevant today and due to which remains relevant also Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological existential approach that underlines the significance of pre-reflexive experience.