Frank Chouraqui
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823254118
- eISBN:
- 9780823261116
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823254118.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter examines Merleau-Ponty’s challenge to the Husserlian theory of phenomenological reduction. Unlike Husserl’s version, Merleau-Ponty’s reduction cannot be operated by consciousness itself, ...
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This chapter examines Merleau-Ponty’s challenge to the Husserlian theory of phenomenological reduction. Unlike Husserl’s version, Merleau-Ponty’s reduction cannot be operated by consciousness itself, for beginning with consciousness can only return us to consciousness and to an arbitrary transcendental idealism. Instead, Merleau-Ponty proposes a reduction operated not by withdrawal and suspension, but on the contrary, by a saturation of perception. This, Merleau-Ponty concludes, indicates that what can be revealed by a properly understood epoche is only the movement from which the world becomes an object for one. This procedure unmasks the world and the subject as correlative illusions.Less
This chapter examines Merleau-Ponty’s challenge to the Husserlian theory of phenomenological reduction. Unlike Husserl’s version, Merleau-Ponty’s reduction cannot be operated by consciousness itself, for beginning with consciousness can only return us to consciousness and to an arbitrary transcendental idealism. Instead, Merleau-Ponty proposes a reduction operated not by withdrawal and suspension, but on the contrary, by a saturation of perception. This, Merleau-Ponty concludes, indicates that what can be revealed by a properly understood epoche is only the movement from which the world becomes an object for one. This procedure unmasks the world and the subject as correlative illusions.
