Reinterpreting Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenon of Synaesthesia from the Perspective of Motor Projects
Abstract
Thinkers of the Enlightenment were enthusiastic about imagining both the possibility and the forms of synaesthesia. The problem of synaesthesia can be viewed as an implicit core issue in the rationalist–empiricist debate. Focusing on the phenomenon of, by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s texts, this paper attempts to explain why Merleau-Ponty claims that “synaesthesia is a general rule,” what is the mechanism of synaesthesia, and how Merleau-Ponty offers a phenomenological interpretation of it. For Merleau-Ponty, synaesthesia is neither a “quasi-sensation,” a mental representation that precedes an action, nor the empiricist idea of habitual association after perception. Rather, it is a form of “bodily knowledge” produced through the body’s projective function and project toward movement. On the one hand, bodily knowledge reveals Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to eliminate the Cartesian transparency of the “cogito” from the primordial process of perception, replacing it by a possibility for a non-objectifying form of knowing. The projective function, on the other hand, makes possible the individualization of private, singular synesthetic experiences.
References
- Locke, J. (1689, 1997). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. London: Penguin.
- Rousseau, J., & Foxley, B. (2009). Emile. NuVision Publications.
- Deroy, O. (Ed.). (2017). Sensory blending: On synaesthesia and related phenomena. Oxford University Press.
- Sartre, J. P. (1957). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (Translated and with an Introduction by Hazel E. Barnes). London: Methuen & Co Ltd.
- Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Ponty-Merleau, M. (1963). The Structure of Behaviour. Beacon.
- Shengli Liu. (2015). Body, Space, and Science: Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenological Study of Space, Jiangsu People's Publishing House.
- Marion, J. & Arbib, D. (2017). The Rigor of Things: Conversations with Dan Arbib. New York, USA: Fordham University Press.
- Arendt, H., & McCarthy, M. (1978). The Life of the Mind. Mariner Books.
- Arendt, H. (1998). The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.