From the movement of natural entities to the transpersonal dynamics of the human living being: who is the subject of perception?

Abstract

Phénoménologie de la perception is undoubtedly one of the most powerful works of French 20th century thought. It poses an ancient and new question at the same time, at the crossroads of phenomenological-existential philosophy with various disciplines that works on the living human being: who is the subject of perception? Merleau-Ponty will answer in this already classic work: the lived body. There, the lived body will be characterized as a particular type of movement, which, in the path of existential phenomenology, acquires the form of an intentional movement, of a transcendence and, finally, of a movement of temporalization that is, in Husserlian terms, the very subjectivity. Taking these analyses as a starting point, we will try to develop in this paper the thesis according to which the lived body must be understood, in Phénoménologie de la perception, as a transpersonal subjective movement. In order to develop this idea, I will start with a general overview of the problem of the relationship between body, movement and life, in front of which Phénoménologie de la perception is presented as a continuity and as a rupture. In the second place, I will present the fundamental concepts that lead to the Merleau-Pontyan conception of the lived body as a subjective movement. In the third place, I will focus my reading on the possibilities opened by this analysis of the body experience that I call transpersonal.