Merleau‐Ponty on painting and the problem of reflection

Bibliographic Data

ID21603089
AuthorsEmma C Jerndal (0000-0002-3049-2953, Department of Philosophy Boston University Boston Massachusetts USA, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume29
Issue1
Pages74-89
Publication date2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0966-8373 • E-ISSN: 1468-0378
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ejop.12559
OpenAlexW3034118729
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited3

The challenge of “catching experience in the act” is commonly recognized as a problem for phenomenological reflection. After tracing this “problem of reflection” to its origin in Natorp's Allgemeine Psychologie and discussing Husserl's critical response, I argue that Merleau‐Ponty recognizes that a version of it poses a genuine problem for phenomenology in the form of what he calls “objective thought.” Seen in light of his concern for the distortion of objective thought, his attention to indeterminacy and distortion in the portraits and still lifes of Cézanne takes on philosophical significance. I analyze how Merleau‐Ponty sees phenomenological concepts such as style, horizons, and coherent deformation at work in a number of paintings and suggest how such features remedy objective thought by resisting the tendency for reflection on ordinary perception to mistake objective properties of objects for properties of the experience in which they are given

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Mistake · Painting · Perception · Art, Aesthetics, and Perception · Computer Science · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Science, and History · Psychology

Tools

Open DOI