Body and Perception -- A Study of Merleau-Ponty's Theory of the Body

The article investigates Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological concept of the body as a necessary condition for human experience, focusing on the body's ambivalent nature as both a subject (Leib) and an object (Körper). The scientific problem lies in the lack of systematic analysis connecting Merleau-Ponty's philosophical theory with the theatrical practice of Jacques Lecoq. The aim is to prove their deep structural affinity by analyzing the concept of movement. The methodology is based on an interdisciplinary approach, combining phenomenological, hermeneutic, and comparative methods. The scientific novelty of the work is in demonstrating for the first time how Lecoq's practical principles– undulation, inverse undulation, and eclosion (unfolding), along with the use of the neutral mask–serve as a practical embodiment and confirmation of Merleau-Ponty's theory of concrete and abstract movement. The results show that movement is not merely physical displacement but an intentional act. Lecoq's methods are viewed as tools of «practical phenomenology,» where the neutral mask functions as a theatrical epoché, compelling the actor towards creative, abstract movement. The practical significance lies in enriching theatre pedagogy with a philosophical foundation and providing philosophy with empirical material for understanding corporeality. Thus, the theater is a space in which the interaction of abstract and concrete movements becomes particularly evident. Concrete movement as a direct interaction with the world and abstract movement as the creation of new worlds show the horizon of possibilities of experience that the body can experience and participate in the creation of its new forms. Of particular interest is the analysis of positionality in theatrical space through the prism of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The prospects for further research lie in expanding this approach to other twentieth-century theatrical systems that also put the body at the center of their attention (for example, Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba). In addition, an interesting direction is the application of phenomenological analysis of movement to contemporary performative practices, dance theater and digital art, where the problem of corporeality and its representation acquires new, even more complex dimensions.

Apresenta-se uma breve consideracao daquilo que e essencial a fenomenologia de Edmund Husserl, juntamente com sinopses dos componentes da concepcao husserliana da investigacao cientifica. Algumas modificacoes construtivas de seus estudantes - Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alfred Schutz e Aron Gurwitsch - sao esbocadas, inclusive algumas sugeridas por sociologos e etnometodologos, Theodor Adorno e Harold Garfinkel entre eles. A tese e que as investigacoes fenomenologicas podem ser enriquecidas pelas investigacoes etnometodologicas dos detalhes locais dos testemunhos do decurso dos eventos mundanos, tal como sao vividos. Quando totalmente focados em sua temporalidade local, tais estudos podem nos dizer mais sobre os topicos fenomenologicamente ricos da producao de sentido e da objetivacao do significado do que a fenomenologia constitutiva de Husserl poderia ter conhecido.

Cultural Technique in Creative Practice: Exploring Cultural Embodiment in the Movement of the Body in a Studio Space

Naturalizing phenomenology – A philosophical imperative

The Beagle record: By R. D. Keynes. Pp. 409. Cambridge University Press, London. 1979. £30.00

Introduction“What can and what cannot I do in a sexual relationship?” |In this way, a middle-aged man with HNC - Head and Neck Cancer, under chemotherapy or radiotherapy, asks. This doubt is raised to the oncologist, radiotherapist, nurse or psychotherapist. Apparently, his concern is objective, considering he has a severe diagnosis and important treatments. However, underlying the manifest doubt, there are symbolic constructions in his mind that generate anguish. The health professionals’ response must go beyond information. They also must understand the symbolic emotional meanings associated with the patient’s speech. This attitude will bring a psychotherapeutic effect to the ill man.ObjectivesTo interpret symbolically sexual and emotional experiences reported by male patients diagnosed with HNC under outpatient treatment in a public specialized clinical unit.MethodsWe used the CQM - Clinical-Qualitative Method (Turato. Portuguese Psychos. J, 2000 2(1): 93-108). For data collection, the main researcher used the Semi-Directed Interview with Open-ended Questions In-Depth and Field Notes. The employ of the Seven Steps of the CQCA - Clinical-Qualitative Content Analysis (Faria-Schützer et al. Cien Saude Colet. 2021; 26(1): 265-274) brings us to discussion categories. The sample was closed with 12 patients according to the information saturation strategy (Fontanella et al. Cad Saude Publica. 2008; 24(1): 17-27). The interviews were conducted by the first author of this abstract, a male nurse, as part of his master’s research at a postgraduate course in Oncology. The findings were validated by peer reviewers from the Lab of Clinical-Qualitative Research at the State University of Campinas.ResultsTwo categories were chosen for this presentation: ‘The dyad perceived in the felt body and the experienced body’, and ‘The body re-signified between the sexual and affective dimensions’. The body symbolized before and after the illness experiences a movement in phenomenological consciousness that leads to external changes in its attitudes. The patient needs now to ask himself and others what this body can - or cannot - do. The severely ill body imposes new meanings for life and sexuality. It does not cancel the wish but asks for a new channelling of your psychic/sexual energies.ConclusionsThese findings indicate that patients with HNC want to talk about sexuality and ask about the risks of sexual activity, contrary to what the common view supposes. Traditional Balint groups met with the multidisciplinary team can be beneficial for doctors and nurses to deal with their own emotional limitations. Furthermore, the Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, under the approach of psychosomatic medicine, focuses on the care of patients with behavioural and emotional manifestations, together with the work of the oncologists.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

The paper first addresses Husserl's conception of philosophical phenomenology, metaphysics, and the relation between them, in order to explain why, on Husserl's view, there is no metaphysics of consciousness without a phenomenology of consciousness. In doing so, it recalls some of the methodological tenets of Husserl's phenomenology, pointing out that phenomenology is an eidetic or a priori science which has first of all to do with mere ideal possibilities of consciousness and its correlates; metaphysics of consciousness, on the other hand, has to do with its reality or actuality, requiring an eidetic foundation in order to become scientifically valuable. Presuming that, if consciousness is to be the subject-matter of a metaphysics which is not simply speculative or based on prejudice, it is crucial to get the phenomenology of consciousness right, the paper then engages in a detailed descriptive-eidetic analysis of mental acts of re-presenting something and tries to argue that their structures, involving components of non-actual experiencing, pose a serious problem for a materialistic or physicalistic metaphysics of consciousness. The paper ends with a brief comment on Husserl's broader view of metaphysics, having to do with the irrationality of the transcendental fact, i.e. the constitution of the factual world and the factual life of the mind.

The practice of power over male actors' bodies in comedy films is understood not as a neutral process where factual reality is conveyed directly through text or images, but as a social praxis related to the deconstruction of gender, resulting in new understandings of masculinity depicted in films from the Reform Era. To address this question, the researcher employs Norman Fairclough's critical discourse approach to comedy films as the main theoretical framework, combined with Michel Foucault's perspective on power relations and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of body language. The paradigm used in this research is the critical paradigm, with data collection techniques obtained through film text documentation studies. The research results show that the male actor's body does not merely function as a tool for visual narration but also as a powerful medium for expressing deeper themes related to power, identity, and social dynamics. For instance, in the film Arisan! 2, the narrative highlights sexual freedom and emotional vulnerability. Meanwhile, Bebas emphasizes physical changes and social symbolism through the male body.

Contemporary painting is a complex practice, and artists regularly incorporate elements from different media such as photography, textile, and performance. Despite its status being diminished by different conceptual art movements, painting still has a critically important place in the artworld. This importance is largely due to painting's ability to stretch across media and make a direct appeal to the senses. In this article, an attempt is made to theorize the facility of painting to incorporate different media and its resulting reflexivity. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of embodiment and phenomenological theory of metaphor provide the theoretical means to articulate reflexivity in painting. Curatorial writing about contemporary painting and case studies of young painters from India form a backdrop for the analysis of examples from the painting practice of one of the authors to demonstrate the material dynamism of painting. It is shown that this reflexivity is intimately related to the sensuous texture of materials used in the creation of the paintings under discussion. The first-person narrative of artistic process and production provides insight into the embodied process of making and manipulating media and evidence that painters can create new insights about the ontology of painting.

This study examines the experiences and perceptions of Denpasar residents regarding alcohol advertisements in public spaces. In a society that upholds religious and cultural values, the presence of such advertisements sparks controversy due to concerns about their impact on social norms and morality. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of the phenomenology of perception, this research aims to analyze how alcohol advertisements influence public perception based on the interaction between the body, consciousness, and social environment. The method employed is a phenomenological approach with in-depth interviews and observations of advertisements in public spaces. The findings reveal that perceptions vary significantly depending on age, gender, occupation, and religious background. The majority of respondents from Muslim and Hindu religious groups reject the presence of these advertisements, considering them to be in conflict with religious values and expressing concern about their potential influence on younger generations. On the other hand, younger respondents tend to be more permissive, as long as the advertisements do not disrupt social order. This study emphasizes the importance of strict regulations on public advertisements to maintain a balance between advertising freedom and the social values upheld by the community.

In the phenomenological method created by Husserl the analysis of consciousness is, undoubtedly, given an exceptionally important place. The Husserlian phenomenology may be even said to represent the investigation sensu stricto of consciousness. Every philosopher, however, is directly concerned with an investigation of consciousness and it is obviously due to this that Husserl frequently comes out as the philosopher par excellence. “Charmed” by a description of the most subtle structures of consciousness presented in Husserl’s writings, we often fail to perceive that the methodological status of consciousness itself remains undefined. To begin with, it is not clear whether consciousness is regarded as a universal object of investigation or merely as a means of cognizing something which is not consciousness. Making no pretensions to a final solution to this question we shall try dwell on certain aspects of it that reveal themselves in the context of the Ingarden-Husserl controversy,1 namely, on the connection between indefinitness of the methodological status of consciousness in phenomenology and a certain limitedness in the human condition that manifests itself as inability to prove one’s own position by self-evidence.

The Mapping of Meaning in Wordsworth’s “Michael”: (Textual Place, Textual Space and Spatialized Speech Acts) Sally Bushell (bio) Sally Bushell Lancaster University, UK Sally Bushell Sally Bushell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University, UK. Her primary research interests are in British Romanticism, textual criticism and the form of the long poem. She is the author of Re-Reading The Excursion (2002) and Text as Process: Creative Composition in Wordsworth, Tennyson and Dickinson (Virginia UP, 2009) as well as co-editor of the Cornell edition of The Excursion (2007). More recently she has begun to work on theories of space and place and their application to the literary work in all its textual manifestations. Footnotes 1. See Bushell, “The Making of Meaning in Wordsworth’s Home at Grasmere: (Speech Acts, Micro-Analysis and ‘Freudian Slips’),” SiR 48.3 (Fall 2009): 391–421. 2. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (1945) (henceforth PP), trans. Colin Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 1962) 294. 3. For a fully historicized account of Romantic philosophies of language and speech act theory see Angela Esterhammer, The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and SiR, 49 (Spring 2010) German Romanticism (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000). Her approach is very different from my own, which seeks to apply speech act theory to the interpretation of Romantic textuality. 4. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945) 335. 5. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (henceforth PEL), trans. Stephen Rendall (Berkeley: U of California P, 1985) 93. 6. Michel de Certeau emphasizes from the outset that his concern lies with examining the practices of users as consumers. He is thus interested in one kind of “making” only—that of the experience involved at the time of participation in an act. In literary terms, he is interested in the “making” of the act of reading (“silent production”), but not in the “making” of the act of writing. 7. Jeremy Ahearne, Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and Its Other (Oxford: Polity P, 1995) 183. 8. Certeau’s model appears dualistic but is not, in part because both place and space are experienced in the world (the third element) but also because of their ability to change each other. Merleau-Ponty’s account (itself looking back to Heidegger) allows for three kinds of space that could also be compared to Henri Lefebvre’s three notions of a “perceived space” (everyday), “conceived space” (theoretical) and “lived space” (fully experienced) in The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) and Edward Soja’s “trialectic” which seeks to connect the human dimensions of spatiality, historicality and sociality (Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-And-Imagined Places [Oxford: Blackwell, 1996]). More recent spatial theorists (such as Doreen Massey) deny the distinction altogether, but it remains helpful in relation to textual spatiality. 9. Thanks to Tim Fulford for reading a draft of this paper and reminding me of this point. 10. For the manuscript each page is unique because of its materiality. For a printed book, even though it is mass-produced, it also exists as an individual physical object, acquiring its own unique materiality (faded in the sun, annotated, coffee-stained etc.). For discussion of the distinction between the particular token and type in relation to literary texts see also James McLaverty, “The Concept of Authorial Intention in Textual Criticism,” The Library 6.2 (1984): 13 1–38. McLaverty uses a musical analogy to “regard the text as the score of the work” (127). 11. Although a personalized materiality can also accrue (see note above). 12. My thanks to James McLaverty for making this point to me in conversation. 13. Paul Eggert, Securing the Past: Conservation in Art, Architecture and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009) 234. 14. “Document and Text: The ‘Life’ of the Literary Work and the Capacities of Editing,” TEXT 7 (1994): 1–14 (2). 15. James Butler and Karen Green, eds., Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, 1797–1800 by William Wordsworth (henceforth LB) (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1992) xxvi. 16. Pamela Woof, ed., Dorothy Wordsworth: The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals...

Husserl's New Phenomenology of Consciousness in the Bernau Manuscripts.- Notes on the Absolute Time-Constituting Flow of Consciousness.- Death and in Husserl's C-Manuscripts.- On Birth, Death, and Sleep in Husserl's Late Manuscripts on Time.- Phenomenology of Authentic Time in Husserl and Heidegger.- On the Constitution of the of the World: The Emergence of Objective on the Ground of Subjective Time.- The Metaphor of the Stream: Critical Approaches.- Retention and the Schema.- The Temporalizations of the Absolute Flow of Time-Consciousness.- Horizontal-Intention: Time, Genesis, History - Husserl's Understanding of Their Immanent Relationship.- Temporality, Stream of Consciousness and the I in The Bernau Manuscripts.- A Return to Retention and Recollection: An Analysis of the Possible Mutual Influence of Consciousness and its Content.- Reflection Upon the Living Present and the Primal Consciousness in Husserl's Phenomenology.- The Inner Night: Towards a Phenomenology of (Dreamless) Sleep.- Intermonadic Temporalization in Simultaneous Reciprocal Awakening.- Inner (Time-)Consciousness.

The topic of embodiment has received a great deal of attention and aroused much enthusiasm within cognitive science in general and psychology in particular. The connotation of embodiment refers essentially to the dependency of cognition on agent's own body. The classical cognitive science committed to the view of disembodied mind. That is, cognition involves algorithmic processes upon symbolic representations. These theories posit no role for body in cognitive processes. They claimed that Mental processes such as perception, memory and thinking et al are independent of bodily structure and functioning. The view of "weak embodiment"argues against disembodiment, and claims that the body should be understood as playing a role in implementing the function of computation and representation that underpins our cognitive capacities. In contrast, the view of "strong embodiment"entirely eschews the computational theory of cognition. It assigns embodiment a degree of significance in the shaping of the character of cognition. From the point of view of strong embodiment, cognitive processes are profoundly reflect the body's interactions with the world. In contemporary embodied cognitive science, there is a radically different stance that also has roots in diverse branches of cognitive science. It resulted in a great deal of diversity in how to understand the meaning of embodiment. We distinguished the following four views:(i) embodiment is understood as a kind of somatic learning. From this point of view, embodiment and somatic learning are used interchangeably. Both are associated with a kind of bodily experiences from body's interaction with outside world.(ii) embodiment involves lived experiences coming from a body with a special neurophysiological structure, which means embodiment is a kind of experience from which cognition is made. Different body intends to make different experience, and different experience make, in turn, different cognition.(iii) embodiment is a way of knowing. We need a brain and a body to make sense of the world around us, and to understand the meaning of "chair"or "cat", then significant differences in forms of embodiment will translate into distinct conceptual metaphors and image schemas which structure our systems of everyday thought.(iv) embodiment means that cognitive processes can not located in a brain alone. The boundary between a cognitive agent and his or her environment should be broken down. Cognition is hybrid processes, it straddle both internal and external operations. In author's opinion, cognition's embodiment means that:(i) cognizing agent's body is a constituent of cognitive processes, and bodily structure and functioning are imprinted on mental processes, which influence our mental processes such as thinking, categorization, attitude, learning and emotion et al.(ii) perception is not the internal reconstruction of the external world. Perception of the environment is the result of the agent's bodily actions. This kind of actions shape the perception of the agent.(iii) body is the source of meaning. It is the body that makes us into a meaningful world. Therefore, abstract meaning is based on bodily sensor-motor systems.(iv) different bodies intend to dictate different thought. If people use their physical perceptions and bodily experiences to construct cognitive processes, then the differences from our interactions with the environment should in fact make people along different way of thinking. Viewed all together, embodiment is about the consequences on cognition of existing as a human body. We are not "having a body", we are "existing as a body". The answers to the meaning of embodiment will have considerable theoretical and practical significance for the community of psychology.

I Spontaneity Of Life, Individualization, Beingness.- Harmony in Becoming: The Spontaneity of Life and Self-Individualization.- Toward a More Comprehensive Concept of life.- Confucian Methodology and Understanding the Human Person.- Heidegger's Quest for the Essence of Man.- A Comparative Study of Lao-tzu and Husserl: A Methodological Approach.- II Human Faculties of Life.- Mind and Consciousness in Chinese Philosophy: A Historical Survey.- Transcendental Consciousness in Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology.- Life-world and Reason in Husserl's Philosophy of Life.- Consciousness and Body in the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty: Some Remarks Concerning Flesh, Vision, and World in the Late Philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.- Language, Consciousness, and Mind in Neo-Confucian Philosophy: The Crossbow Pellet.- Conscience and Life: The Role of Freedom in Heidegger's Conception of Conscience.- III Life, Morality and Inwardness.- A Reevaluation of Confucius.- Conscience, Morality and Creativity.- Confucian Moral Metaphysics and Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology.- The Concept of Tao: A Hermeneutical Perspective.- Phenomenology in T'ien-t'ai and Hua-yen Buddhism.- Chinese Buddhism as an Existential Phenomenology.- A Critical Reflection on the Methods of Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and the Idea of Contextualization in Religious and Theological Studies.- IV The Locus of Art In Life.- The Tenets of Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a Philosophical Perspective.- The Literary Work and Its Concretization in Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics.- The Writer as Shaman.- A Glimpse of the Fundamental Nature of Japanese Art.- A Phenomenological Perspective of Theodore Roethke's Poetry.- Virginia Woolf's Theory of Reception.- The Aesthetic Interpretation of life in The Tale of Genji.- Index Of Names.