Mezi tělem a reprezentací: sexualita ve „Fenomenologii vnímání“

• Authors: Josef Fulka

Title variants

EN

Between the body and representation: Sexuality in the “Phenomenology of Perception”

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

This study is a commentary on the chapter of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception that deals with the question of sexuality. In opposition to the traditional causal conception of sexual behaviour as a series of reflexes, Merleau-Ponty conceives sexuality as a specific type of intentionality and a relation between the individual and the world. Figuring in his complex argumentation is clinical casuistry, as well as references to Freudian and Binswangerian psychoanalysis. Special attention is given to Merleau-Ponty’s comment on Babinsky’s conception of hysteria which provides the impetus for a new treatment of the ambivalence of consciousness and embodiment. The aim of this text is, however, also to show that Merleau-Ponty’s analysis is in no way intended just as a particular analysis of one type of behaviour. Rather, sexuality becomes, in Merleau-Ponty’s work, a truly emblematic structure which exemplifies human existence itself in its significative and expressive dimension. As such, sexuality resonates with, for example, Merleau-Ponty’s conception of language, the radicalisation of which led him to his final analyses in The Visible and the Invisible.

Keywords

sexuality; Phenomenology of Perception; Merleau-Ponty

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filosofický časopis (Philosophical Journal)
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 58
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 23-34
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Josef Fulka

• Filosofický časopis, redakce, Filosofický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic