Instinct and libido: transformations of the concept of life on Merleau-Ponty’s works

• Grant number: 10/07016-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: July 01, 2010
• End date: June 30, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marilena de Souza Chauí
• Grantee: Silvana de Souza Ramos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Having at its center the analysis of the transformation of concept of life, our research inquires on the progressive abandonment of dichotomy between instinct and libido on Merleau-Ponty´s philosophy. At first, we analyze how human order, as explored on The Structure of behavior and grounded through the exploration of incarnated subject on Phenomenology of Perception, appears as the overcoming of vital behavior, in a way that the human existence - since indetermination of libido and temporality of perception - is granted overcomes the fixity of instinct, offering an opening of new fields of experience proper to the symbolical order. Then, we discuss how this concept of life - originated at the 50´s, that is, on the lectures about institution and passivity, and later developed on the lectures about Nature - permits to describe the term of instinct according to the notion of Stiftung. In these terms, life isn´t abandoned any more to instinctive monotony and can be understood according to the expressive model of temporality that predominates on the merleaupontian discussions on language. In that way, as long as instinct appears as unforeseeable institution, the separation between human and living being cannot be founded on the difference between the fixity of instinct and the indetermination of libido. Finally, we show how this apprehension approximates the subject of perception of living, suggesting problems related to the structural role of libido. Because, since symbolic institutes itself in the middle of instinctive behavior, how is possible to know for sure the specificity of human libido in front of the power of expression of vital behaving? (AU)