Embodied Meaning in Hegel and Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper it is argued that the conceptions of embodied meaning and of intuition that Hegel appeals to in the Aesthetics anticipate some of Merleau-Ponty’s insights concerning the distinctive character of pre-conceptual, sensuous forms of meaning. It is argued that, for Hegel, our aesthetic experience of the beautiful is such that we cannot readily differentiate in it the purportedly distinct roles that sensation and thought play, and so that the account of sensuous intuition operative here differs from the one appealed to in more familiar, ‘intellectualist’ conceptions that are premised upon our being able to make such a distinction. Some of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights are brought to bear to help support and illuminate some of the implications of Hegel’s conception of such sensuously embodied meaning.