The relationship between phenomenology and art in Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty investigated the bodily experience, which he thinks has an original place in human existence, with a distinctive phenomenological method to overcome the traditional dichotomic thinking style. Thus, he aimed to fix the bond between humanity and being which was broken by the traditional thought and put philosophy right. His thought manifested change in time and this change is a topic of debate. The main problem of this thesis is the contradictory style of approach to his thought. Merleau-Ponty always re-examined his intellectual foundations, considered objects of his investigations in their wholeness and gave art special place in his philosophy. But aforementioned style of approach tries to understand this thought by impairing the integrity of it, isolating it from other kinds of interrogations and without paying attention to its development. The aim of this thesis is to discuss the progress of the phenomenology and art relation in his thought in the context of overcoming the traditional dichotomies and show the importance of this relation. Because, only by doing this it could be possible to reveal the aesthetic aspect which deeply inhabits his thought. When this is achieved, it could be shown that Merleau-Ponty established the original meaning and value of limited existence of human kind. In the first chapter Merleau-Ponty's conception of phenomenology and expectations from it in relation to life is discussed. The point displayed in this chapter is that his thought exhibits a serious continuity when it comes to the method. According to him, philosophy is essentially a struggle to re-capture worldly experience. His early version of phenomenological method and projection concerning the philosophical interrogation in his late period show a continuity in terms of being an effort to do justice to lived experience, bodily existence and world of perception by preserving the awareness of their methodological limitations. In the second chapter Merleau-Ponty's concepts of perception and body are put forth by staying in his early period frame of thought. To his view, what perspectival structure of perception shows is that the perceiver is not a mind which is disconnected from the world and looks down on it but is a body which dwells in a particular space in the world and between things. The most important attribute of the living body is its expressiveness. This expressiveness is the other side of the body's meaning giving intentionality and covers body's all functions and layers. The point exposited in this chapter is that all layers of body, from most basic sense impressions to most abstract linguistic expressions, are ladened with meaning and become integrated via expressiveness. In the third chapter the relation which Merleau-Ponty sees between art and being revealed on the basis of body's expressiveness. Merleau-Ponty thinks that genuine art, akin to phenomenology, tries to unveil the intentional bonds which connect us to the world. Painting establishes the space in which being reveals itself. Merleau-Ponty comprehends phenomenology alongside art and in general modern thought as an manifestation of abiding expression of life, the world and being. Effort of expression contains an endless and exhaustless richness and limitless diversity akin to world experience itself. As a result of evaluations, it has been seen that the change in Merleau-Ponty's thought is a transformation process which contains continuities and breakdowns and by means of this transformation his thought actualized itself. Merleau-Ponty's thought by his notion of centerless subjectivity made possible by critique of tacit cogito and by his ontology which make possible infinite differentiation without violating identity, to which it reached through this process, overcame the traditional dichotomic thinking. What thinking about art manifest is that in art experience a human being and the world are intertwined to such a degree that it is impossible to dichotomize them. Merleau-Ponty's thinking and writing style gradually came close to the style of art's interrogation. Taking his struggle with dichotomic thinking through his ideas concerning art reveals the aesthetic essence which deeply inhabits his thought. Through concept of flesh, the aesthetic phenomenology by encompassing and surpassing itself became an aesthetic ontology. Thus, human kind's limitedness which stamped modernity, gained a distinctive and irreducible value on the ontological basis by Merleau-Ponty.