The concept of language in the sensible field: the object of Psychology in Merleau-Ponty

• Grant number: 14/14703-6
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): November 01, 2014
• Effective date (End): July 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Cooperation agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal researcher: Reinaldo Furlan
• Grantee: Gilberto Hoffmann Marcon
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The language constitutes a major theme in the study of the subjectivity phenomena. In Psychology and in other Human Sciences, many theoretical approaches report to the linguistic phenomena as a central field of investigation. In Contemporary Psychology, language represents a privileged study theme, as it refers, at the same time, to the individual production of meaning, the intersubjective exchange of significance and at the same time presents itself as a socially constructed system. As such, it articulates the individual and the social/cultural fields, presenting itself as singular phenomena that remounts to a cultural subjectivation context. As part of a broader project to understand the object of study of Psychology from the point of view of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's (1908-1961) Philosophy, we believe that an in-depth study of the notion of language in said reflections can represent an important step. We will see that on the initial context of debate with the behavioral sciences and Empiristic Physiology, in The Structure of Behavior (1942), the author already presents the possibility of, without recurring to any mentalistic notions of conscience, a prototypic signification process present on the very relation between the living organism and its surroundings. After that, as the focus of his works tend to the Phenomenology of perception (1945), a central point on Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy, we will see how he presents, as part of his description of the perceptive consciousness and embodied subjectivity, his first assertions regarding the concept of language directly. In those, the author presents the concepts of the gestural sense of speak and the funding characteristic of expressivity over meaning. Merleau-Ponty affirms that the meaning operations occur through the expression process, as the expression does not just translate a previously defined meaning in thought, but is the realization of the meaning in itself. Then, we mean to follow the developments of the theme on the period that the philosopher lectured on Sorbonne (1949-1952), where the dialogue with Saussure's Linguistics gives new shaping to Merleau-Ponty's concept of language. His reflections goes from the gestural sense of speaking to the systemic sense of the language (a system constructed through the act of speaking, but that exists nonetheless as such). We propose an in-depth analysis of each of these propositions from the author on the theme, focusing as well on the movement that leads his developments from one point to another. From that, we mean to elucidate the possible contributions that a phenomenological notion of language, inserted on the sensible field, offers to a study of subjectivity from a psychological approach. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

. Language in the field of Feeling: an object of psychology in light of Merleau-Pontys philosophy. 2017. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC) Ribeirão Preto.