[Xmca-l] Re: Leontyev's activities

[Larry Purss]

Martin,

Thanks for mentioning Merleau-Ponty as a scholar who tried to work across
discourses.
I want to return to a summary of the theme of the book:

"It is impossible to define an object in cutting it off from the subject
through which and for which it is an object; and the subject reveals itself
only through the objects in which it is engaged. Such an affirmation only
makes the content of naive experience explicit, but it is rich in
consequences. Only in taking it as a basis will one succeed in building an
ethics to which man can totally and sincerely adhere. It is therefore of
extreme importance to establish it solidly and to give back to man this
childish audacity that years of verbal submission have taken away: the
audacity to say: "I am here."

M-P is attempting to make the content of naive experience EXPLICIT.
THIS realm is the BASIS for building an *ethics* to which man can totally
and sincerely adhere. I would suggest John Shotter in trying to make
distinct 3 realms of knowing is trying to explore naive experience with the
audacity to say: "I am here".
I would add [ventriloquating John Shotter] the confirmation: "I hear you"
I read M-P as embracing the ambivalence and tension of "I am here" & "I
hear you"

Dreyfus, who is writing on Foucault's method of archeology shows how
Foucault & Merleau-Ponty [Foucault's teacher] approached existential
phenomenology. There is a difference that I find interesting as a
difference in style and attitude.
Foucault called M-P's existential phenomenology "the analysis of actual
experience". His evaluation of his teacher's project he called *ambiguous*
and a discourse of mixed nature which can never be completed. Foucault
writes of M-P's approach, "What is given in experience and what renders
experience possible correspond to one another in an ENDLESS OSCILLATION.
Now here is the difference in attitude or style [tone]. Dreyfus notes for
M-P precisely this incompleteability and ambiguity of the the analytic of
actual experience was what made it so fascinating.
On the other hand for Foucault this same ambiguity and incompleteability
shows that M-P's project was HOPELESS from the start. For Foucault there is
no way to OVERCOME the instability of the limitations of the body.
Foucault responds to M-P's project by saying, "Its congentital problems
will only be (dis)solved when anthropological discourse is discarded."

Martin, what I find interesting is how for M-P the ambiguity and
incompleteability of actual experience is understood as an ethical virtue.
"I am here" & "I hear you" WITHIN naive *folk* psychology are embraced.
For Foucault this same 'actuality' must be *overcome*

To return to Shotter, "conversational realities" form WITHIN the gap of "I
am here" and "I hear you". Sedimented actuality & spontaneous actuality,
formed & forming experience, discourses & conversations. THIS calls forth a
different KIND of agency, not soverign, but still forming within
enculturated 2nd natures. The "self" AS artifactual or hybrid.
Do we need to transcend humanistic discourses as Foucault recommends? Or is
the ambiguity and incompleteabity the *givenness* of our human life forms.
If the intent is to recapture child like naive actual existential
phenomenology  [something as something else] I believe Shotter's knowing
FROM WITHIN can add to a style or attitude of paying attention to
"conversational realities" in their ambiguity and incompleteability.
"I am here" & "I hear you".
Sense AS perception and action "turns" when the felt style or attitude
shifts within activities.
I hope it is ok to participate in criss-crossing discourses [which is how
Wittgenstein .described his approach to showing how we participate in
language activities.] I am ambivalent.
Larry


On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 3:20 PM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co
> wrote:

> Earlier today I tried to send a message about a new translation of
> Merleau-Ponty's book Phenomenology of Perception. Apparently my message
> disappeared into the aether - which is unfortunate because I think that M-P
> provides an example of what Lubomir is looking for. Merleau-Ponty wrote
> about both humanism/existentialism and marxism, and his
> philosophical/psychological writings dissolved the boundaries between these
> two. I am copying below the publisher's information and a link.
>
> Martin
>
> On Aug 20, 2013, at 5:05 PM, Lubomir Savov Popov <lspopov@bgsu.edu>
>  wrote:
>
> > It is interesting to study how ideas about holistic presentation of
> reality are operationalized/concretized in Dialectical Materialism and in
> the humanist approaches.
>
> <http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415834339/>
>
> First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental Phénoménologie
> de la perception signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and
> intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture
> of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the
> landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the
> first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available
> to a new generation of readers.
>
> Phenomenology of Perception stands in the great phenomenological tradition
> of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s contribution is
> decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors,
> particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our
> experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course
> between the reductionism of science on the one hand and "intellectualism"
> on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a
> mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures one’s
> situation and experience within the world.
>
> Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous
> cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that
> continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome,
> synaesthesia, and hallucination. This new translation includes many helpful
> features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of
> Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive
> Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining
> key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of
> Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations.
>
> Also included is a new foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to
> Merleau-Ponty by Claude Lefort.
>
> Translated by Donald A. Landes.
>
> ====
> "It is impossible to define an object in cutting it off from the subject
> through which and for which it is an object; and the subject reveals itself
> only through the objects in which it is engaged. Such an affirmation only
> makes the content of naive experience explicit, but it is rich in
> consequences. Only in taking it as a basis will one succeed in building an
> ethics to which man can totally and sincerely adhere. It is therefore of
> extreme importance to establish it solidly and to give back to man this
> childish audacity that years of verbal submission have taken away: the
> audacity to say: "I am here." This is why The Phenomenology of Perception
> by Maurice Merleau-Ponty is not only a remarkable specialist work but a
> book that is of interest to the whole of man and to every man; the human
> condition is at stake in this book." - Simone de Beauvoir, 1945
>
> ====
> Foreword, Taylor Carman
> Introduction, Claude Lefort
> Preface
> Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena
> I. Sensation
> II. Association and the Projection of Memories
> III. Attention and Judgment
> IV. The Phenomenal Field
> Part 1: The Body
> 1. The Body as an Object and Mechanistic Physiology
> 2. The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology
> 3. The Spatiality of the One’s Own Body and Motility
> 4. The Synthesis of One’s Own Body
> 5. The Body as a Sexed Being
> 6. Speech and the Body as Expression
> Part 2: The Perceived World
> 7. Sensing
> 8. Space
> 9. The Thing and the Natural World
> 10. Others and the Human World
> Part 3: Being-For-Itself and Being-In-The-World
> 11. The Cogito
> 12. Temporality
> 13. Freedom
> Original Bibliography
> Bibliography of English Translations cited
> Additional Work Cited
> Index
>
> Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, France. Drawn
> to philosophy from a young age, Merleau-Ponty would go on to study
> alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil at the
> famous École Normale Supérieure. He completed a Docteur ès lettres based on
> two dissertations, La structure du comportement (1942) andPhénoménologie de
> la perception (1945). After a brief post at the University of Lyon,
> Merleau-Ponty returned to Paris in 1949 when he was awarded the Chair of
> Psychology and Pedagogy at the Sorbonne. In 1952 he became the youngest
> philosopher ever appointed to the prestigious Chair of Philosophy at the
> Collège de France. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 aged fifty-three,
> at the height of his career. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in
> Paris.
>
>