Affect and subjectivity on Merleau-Ponty's first works

• Grant number: 12/19613-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2012
• End date: October 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Marina Massimi
• Grantee: Gilberto Hoffmann Marcon
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

On this work we propose the study of the concept of affect found on Merleau-Ponty's first works, as well as its relation with said author's considerations about subjectivity. We focus our investigation on the author's second work, Fenomenologia da Percepção (1945). We believe that on this work the theme is shown possessing more relevance compared with the author's previous work, A Estrutura do Comportamento (1942), as well as preparing some central reflections found in the author's later work. On his first work, Merleau-Ponty presents the concept of structure as an alternative to the classic dualistic ontology that radically divides the "subject" from the "object". From this comes a notion of consciousness as an original "form" that emerges from the body and nature orders, "inferior" orders that, although indispensable for the consciousness, cannot totalize its meaning by themselves. On his second work, the author utilizes the phenomenological method on a radical questioning and description of the perceptive consciousness, where emerges the notion of tacit cogito, a "field of meaning" acting as a generality background always present on the horizon of a situated consciousness. We'll investigate the affect conception present on Fenomenologia da Percepção, specifically from the reflections of the author on the body in its sexual being and the author's debate with the cartesian notion of cogito. From that, our objective will be to show how that notion structures a subjectivity comprehension. (AU)