Incarnated Meaning and the Notion of Gestalt in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology

Abstract

Although it is well known that Gestalt theory had an important impact on Merleau-Ponty's philosophy throughout his career, there is still no detailed study either of its influence on his ideas or of his own understanding of the notoriously polysemic notion of Gestalt. Yet, this notion is a key to Merleau-Ponty's fundamental project of overcoming "objective thought" and its inherent dichotomies. By indicating how signification or ideality can be immanent in, rather than opposed to, matter, it compels us to redefine both consciousness and the world it is bound up with. The aim of this article is to clarify Merleau-Ponty's notion of Gestalt against the historical background that he refers to, including Kurt Goldstein's theory of the organism that was crucial for his interpretation.Although the importance of Gestalt theory for Merleau-Ponty is widely acknowledged, no one has yet examined its influence on his philosophy in detail. More often than not, monographs on his general thought mention its significance, but rather parenthetically, and the concept of Gestalt, with the related notions of form and structure, in Merleau-Ponty is rarely analysed against this background. 2 Moreover, the Gestalt theorists are sometimes made to include thinkers such as the neurologist Kurt Goldstein, 3 whose work was without doubt of great significance for Merleau-Ponty in this context, but precisely in that Goldstein criticised certain basic tenets of Gestalt theory.

Thinking on Reality: Metzger and the Rejection of the “Eleatic Postulate”1

“…Closely related to what has been said is Merleau-Ponty's notion of "incarnate sense," that is, the impossibility of distinguishing between thought and perception. It should be noted, however, that the starting point of Merleau-Ponty's analysis of perception was undoubtedly Gestalt theory, from which, however, he has moved away in recent years and criticized some of Gestalt theory's assumptions (1964on these aspects, see Barbaras, 1991;Foultier, 2015).…”