What is manifestation woven on, warp and weft? The cogency of Michel Henry’s response, “Auto-affective life” (original) (raw)

THE MATERIALITY OF EXPERIENCE. PHENOMENOLOGY BETWEEN PHAINOLOGY AND PHENOMENISM

Síntesis. Revista de Filosofía, 2023

In this paper, I consider the materiality of experience as stemming from a temporal process of senseformation (Sinnbildung), whose essence is not just formally configured, but also materially organized. In order to understand this process of sense-formation, I first examine the materiality that is intrinsic to the intentional sense and its relationship with the sensible materiality of experience brought forth by the project of hyletic phenomenology. In the second part of the paper, I propose to overcome the tension between a materiality of sense and a materiality of sensibility by reflecting on the specific materiality that is created in our experience through the dynamism of imaginative modifications. Allowing us to switch between different temporal and spatial horizons, imaginative projections and reveries reveal a hidden "reverse" side of our perceptive field, that we access only when we let go of objectifying acts and established significance. In the last part of the paper, I turn toward bodily gestures, in which I see an expression of experience that resists objectification and straightforward symbolization, attesting for the complex social inscription of our bodily existence. I end the paper with an inquiry into the specific materiality of gestures, understanding them as vanishing archives offered to the future.

Phenomenology and Perceptual Content

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2019

Terence Horgan and John Tienson argue that there is phenomenal intentionality, i.e., “a kind of intentionality, pervasive in human mental life, that is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone” (p. 520). However, their arguments are open to two lines of objection. First, Horgan and Tienson are not sufficiently clear as to what kind of content it is that they take to be determined by, or to supervene on, phenomenal character. Second, critics have objected that, for their conclusion to follow, Horgan and Tienson would first have to establish the co-variation of phenomenology and intentional content, but even so, phenomenal intentionality would still emerge as less plausible than its converse, representationalism. I will address these two challenges by appeal to Husserlian ideas. A consideration of perceptual phenomenology (i.e., phenomenal character) shows that there is a kind of perceptual content that is, indeed, determined by phenomenal character. Such content is conceived in terms of fulfillment conditions, or what it takes to bring aspects of objects and scenes to different, and more complete, ways of givenness. We can establish the primacy of phenomenology, relative to such fulfillment-conditional content, by tracing it back to the basic phenomenology of visual and other sensations.

Holism in perception - Merleau-Ponty on senses and objects

TIDskrift, 2015

In this article, I set out to explore Merleau-Ponty's view of our senses and their interconnection with perceptual phenomena. In the spirit of Merleau-Ponty, I draw on contemporary empirical research exploring synesthesia and its importance for understanding non-synesthetic perception. Combining points from Merleau-Ponty with research from the last twenty years of synesthesia-research, which, sadly, has gone by relatively unnoticed by philosophers interested in the problem of perception, I attempt to show how a modular view of mind distorts the nature of perception. I further reject the idea that a perceived object is an empty intellectual substance or bearer of qualities, but I also reject the idea that the qualities in themselves are what truly matters in a perceived object. Instead, I advocate a more dynamic and holistic view, where the qualities of the percept entwine and saturate each other just as our senses always communicate and influence each other. This is a view where modular interpretations of our senses and perceptual qualities are viewed as perverting the primordial nature of perception itself since they overlook the dynamic way in which the living, embodied subject and perceived object are correlated. Holism in perception: Merleau-Ponty on senses and objects Object-perception is an arduous business. How do we account for perceptual constancy; the unified identity of a perceived object over time? How do we pick out one visual object amongst a whole array of visual

Perception as Body: Body as Perception: Reading Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception

In his preface of the "Phenomenology of Perception," Merleau-Ponty explicitly claims that "[P]henomenology is accessible only through a phenomenological method." 1 This statement is more than a direction to any discourse made on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Clearly, it is a warning that to understand phenomenology-if understanding could suffice to mean grasping the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty-one has to be acquainted, primordially, with the phenomenological method. The phenomenological method, on the one hand, is made accessible only by a thorough understanding of phenomenology. In a sense, this statement presents a difficulty in entering the world of Merleau-Ponty because of the enigma of whether to know the phenomenological method first in order to understand phenomenology, or to know phenomenology first in order to understand the phenomenological method.

Phenomenology without Correlationism: Husserl's Hyletic Material

Indo Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 2015

The argument presented in this paper is that phenomenological ontology survives the criticism of “correlationism” as advanced by Speculative Realism. Correlationism is the position, allegedly occupied by phenomenology, that presupposes the ontological primacy of the human subject. Phenomenology survives this criticism not because the criticism misses its mark, but because the former occupies a position that is broader than that of correlationism. With its critique of correlationism, Speculative Realism rightly identifies a battle that no longer needs to be fought: the battle against 19th century brands of mechanical realism. Free from the impatient and defensive posturing against the mechanization of the human, phenomenology is also free to explore the world beyond its emphasis on human experience. Doing so requires a return to Husserl’s discussion of hylé and the “twofold bed of phenomenology.” Phenomenology may emphasize hylé—that is, material; or it may emphasize nous—the world as it appears to or is transformed by consciousness. By returning to the Phenomenology of Perception, a case is made for hyletic phenomenology. Hyletic phenomenology allows for ontological reversibility and it recognizes the unhuman elements in things. It is hyletic phenomenology that grounds phenomenological ontology after the critique of correlationism has been assessed.

ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND OF HAPTIC VISUALITY

2015

The perception of art is, ideally speaking, the full-blown use of the human sensorium, even though the ideal case is far from reality. It is a kind of attractor point which can never be realized but which the 'system' of art perceptions may infinitely approach. Individual sensory experience can thus become fundamental in a relatively isolated or artificially created context. What I wish to contend here is that the perception of art constitutes such a context. Starting with the idea of haptic images described by Laura Marks as "a lack of things to see" the evolution of taste is proposed as a model for all the senses including vision and film. Haptic images poses the challenge to the viewer to settle for "potential" images which can be aligned with impressionist and other avant-garde attempts. capitalizing on Dario Gamboni's idea of "indexical regressing" I argue that it requires a kind of relearning or remapping of the sensorium which must be monitored consciously. If contemplation starts with the "brute" fact of experiencing an art work which can give way to deeper analysis and reflection, 'learning' or rather 're-learning' the senses reverses the process: it is an ontogenetic or consciously willed preparation for the experience of art.