Language in the field of Feeling: an object of psychology in light of Merleau-Pontys philosophy

Author(s)

Gilberto Hoffmann Marcon

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Ribeirão Preto.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC)
• Defense date: 2017-06-09

Examining board members

Reinaldo Furlan; Luiz Damon Santos Moutinho; Danilo Saretta Verissimo

• Advisor: Reinaldo Furlan

Abstract

Language presents a theme of great importance to the comprehensive study of subjectivity phenomena. In psychology, as well as in other human sciences, there are several schools of thought that historically approached the linguistic phenomena as a central scope in the effort to comprehend the cultural processes of subjectivation. In contemporary psychology, language remains a privileged field of study as it encompasses, at the same time, the orders of production of individual and intersubjective meaning, as well as presenting itself as historically instituted. Therefore, it articulates the individual and social spheres, phenomena of the personal order that remounts to a cultural context of subjectivation. As part of a larger effort to comprehend the object of study of psychology from the point of view of Maurice Merleau-Pontys (1908 1961) philosophy, we proposed an in-depth study of the notion of language as made possible by his reflections. We will see that, already in the discussion with the behavioral sciences and with classical physiology, in The Structure of Behavior (1942), Merleau-Ponty points out that even without resorting to an account of consciousness it is already possible to identify a prototypic signification activity in the relation between the living organism and its environment. Subsequently, in turning to the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), a central point in the author\'s philosophical project, we will see how he presents, on his description of perceptual consciousness and of embodied subjectivity, his first thesis about language itself, that are organized around the gestural meaning of speech and on the founding character of expression in relation to meaning. He proposed that meaning operations are carried out through expression itself, opposing the idea that expression acts as a mere translation of a meaning that precedes it in thought. We accompany the development of this theme in the 1950s, where the dialogue with saussurean linguistics gives new outlines to the project of comprehending language, that develops from the gestural meaning to the diacritic character of language as a system sedimented through speech. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/14703-6 - The concept of language in the sensible field: the object of Psychology in Merleau-Ponty
• Grantee: Gilberto Hoffmann Marcon
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master