Merleau-Ponty with Ricoeur: the syncretic experience in the folds of perception and imagination

• Grant number: 25/01590-3
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: June 30, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Danilo Saretta Verissimo
• Grantee: Danilo Saretta Verissimo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Research project of a theoretical-conceptual nature whose general objective, in philosophical-scientific terms, is to establish a synthesis of conceptual instruments relating to an expanded conception of sensitive experience, which repositions the primacy of perception in phenomenology, and which encompasses aspects of intentionality relating to affections, desire, action, imagination and language. In a first direction, the analysis will be based on the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. The aim is to examine internal intersections, i.e. within their own philosophies, and external ones, i.e. in the weaving of approximations and confrontations between them, which involve questions concerning, on a first level, the links between perception and imagination. In the folds of the interaction between their approaches to perception, expression, symbolism and imagination, it should be possible to review the perceptual circumscription of experience, perception thought of as separate from action, affectivity, imagination and the symbolic dimension that runs through our social life, in which we collectively share cultural meanings. Elements such as the affective, symbolic and oniric texture of sensitive experience should be highlighted, as well as the mundane reference of imagination and of the imaginary. Above all, it is of interest to discuss, in the light of a syncretic conception of the sensible, the productive character of experience, linked to the continuous possibility of constituting new ways of being in the world. In a second direction of work, the theoretical-philosophical debate will unfold in theoretical initiatives of social criticism from a historical-existential perspective. The aim is to problematize the conditions of sensitive experience in contemporary computerized societies, especially issues concerning the profusion of digital image and information devices, and what is recognized today as virtual. It is important to discern the socio-technical mechanisms behind the development and dissemination of such devices, as well as their psychosocial implications. Perhaps there is a crisis of the imagination in the face of the progressive constitution of an economy of attention, something like a symbolic domination capable of shaping new social determinants. (AU)