Merleau-Ponty’s Criticism of Gurwitsch

On the Consciousness of Identity and Reality of Perceptual Object

Abstract

Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) and Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973) had a very close relationship. However, the comparative studies of them have not been sufficiently conducted. There are several possible reasons for this situation, but the most important is that while Merleau-Ponty learned a lot from Gurwitsch about Gestalt psychology and Husserl’s phenomenology, he rarely referred to him in his texts, making it difficult to track their relationships on texts. However, there is a hopeful clue for comparative studies of them. Merleau-Ponty wrote a reading note on Gurwitsch’s The Field of Consciousness. In this article, I try to reconstruct the controversy that could be arisen between them by reading The Field of Consciousness and Merleau-Ponty’s “Reading Notes.” The purpose of this paper is 1) to elucidate Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of Gurwitsch, concerning his understanding of the identity and realism of objects given in perceptual experiences 2) to make Merleau-Ponty’s position about the themes clear in comparison with Gurwitsch’s position In the first section, as a preliminary work, I examine Gurwitsch’s “Theory of Reference” which is mainly developed in The Field of Consciousness. In the second section, through a close reading of “Reading Notes,” I try to show the essence of Merleau-Ponty’s criticism directed at the Gurwitsch’s “Theory of Reference.” In the third section, I discuss how Merleau-Ponty’s view is characterized in comparison with Gurwitsch.