Visible and Invisible: Studies on Merleau-Ponty''s philosophy of vision

• Main Authors: Ya-Lan, Liu, 劉亞蘭
• Other Authors: Tran Van Doan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/94342293190966642195

博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 哲學研究所 === 92 === This thesis discusses the relationship between perceiver and perceptible. In these percipient experiences, I specially pay attention to the relationship between vision and visible. In this context, the focus is placed on whether French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical thinking is compatible with feminism. That is to say, as part of Merleau-Ponty, I discuss how the see-subject is also the seen-object; as part of feminism, I discuss whether the see-man is necessarily equal to a invader who deprives the seen-woman’s subjectivity and whether the seen-woman is necessarily equal to a object whose subjectivity is been encroached and seized passively by man. In chapter 1, my key point is that Merleau-Ponty how to explain the perception of erotic and the perception of Other. I also argue that phenomenology can compatible with feminism and cooperates each other. In chapter 2, I think that the cooperation of phenomenology and feminism had already appeared in Simone Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. But on the other hand, The Second Sex encounters the dilemma about the concept of freedom, and I think that Merleau-Ponty’s explanation about situation and freedom could dissolve this dilemma in The Second Sex. In chapter 3, I proceed to examine that Merleau-Ponty discusses about the ‘ambiguous’ character in percipient experiences. By these explanations, I argue that Merleau-Ponty about vision is widely different from the Cartesianism. In chapter 4, I discuss that Merleau-Ponty transforms from phenomenology to quasi-structuralism about vision on his middle and the later period. And I compare with the viewpoints of Luce Irigaray and Jacques Lacan about vision to show the feature of Merleau-Ponty about vision, that is, the vision possesses the attributes of tender, intimate and openness, therefore the seen-woman is not a passively object but a ‘body-subject’.