Ecos de um pensamento da ambiguidade e do silêncio a partir de A estrutura do comportamento de Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

If there is a theme that spans though the entire philosophical trajectory of Merleau-Ponty and which, both, places him in the interior of a tradition inaugurated by Descartes as well as in radical opposition to this same tradition, that would be the theme of the relation between consciousness and nature. It is the starting point for the investigation in The structure of behaviour, it is also the theme of Phenomenology of Perception: in both texts it is treated in terms of a inflection of the comprehension of experience and of perception, anchoring them in the facticity of the body proper, explicating in perception and in experience a ground of expression. The same theme is present in the post-Phenomenology writings, where now the interrogation centers on the phenomena of expression and language. It is in this sense that we propose here that The structure of behavior opens up to questions that will occupy the philosopher’s entire course of his investigations, that this text does not get expired in view of the movements that followed it, rather, that it gained in profundity, that if it already introduces us to axial issues that will guide future researches, simultaneously, it becomes, as the work progress, an aspect of the totality of the work, in the sense that we may now say that it illuminates and is illuminated by the thought that succeeds it. Section one of this thesis introduces the main theme of The Structure of Behavior, the question on the grounds of which he builds his critique to substance philosophies: self-enclosed being, absolutely determined, presupposition common to both, empiricism and intellectualism, a preconcept that at the same time will not allow them to recognize the common ground of their theories and will enclose both in the positive and objective. Section 2 presents his critique, via an analysis of the theory of reflex, of a Cartesianism. His critique, nonetheless, we show, is not meant solely to destroy a tradition, in fact, Merleau-Ponty builds a sort of critique that aims at the restauration of a Descartes that can still deliver new and pressing questions. We attempted to show that the notion of the unthought, which will appear in its full force in last writings, is already present in this first book. In sections 3 and 4 we expound his critique to Gestalttheory and to Behaviorism which, simultaneously, points out their insufficiency, for they’re never able to detach themselves from substance theories, as well as to what they have of originary, that is, the notions of behavior and form. By the appropriation and radicalization of these notions, the relations between consciousness and world (or between animal and its milieu) appear ambiguous, indicating the necessity of a thinking of ambiguity and the incompleteness. In the last section, we bring a reflection on how the themes addressed in the previous sections reverberate in the whole of the writings of Merleau-Ponty, even in his movement more explicit to a philosophy as writing (écriture), writing which is simultaneously convocated by silence and involved in silence. If we propose, therefore, that The Structure of Behaviour has a sense that extends beyond the work itself, this is because the ambiguous aspect of our coping with the world, incompleteness, the silence of the perceived world, and the comprehension of perception of as already involved by expression, themes introduced in this inaugural text, are present and govern central aspects of his philosophical path.