Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.8, 2014

 

Opposition to Cartesianism from the Viewpoint of Embodiment Theory—As Seen in the Dialogue between Merleau-Ponty and Cézanne

(Abstract)

 

Liu Zhe

 

As a contemporary development of the concept of subjectivity, the tricky issue of embodiment has constituted the basic problematic of Western philosophical thought since the Enlightenment. This implies a reconsideration of the mind-body difference relationship predicated on rejection of Cartesian dualism. Through analyzing the doubt expressed in Cézanne’s works, Merleau-Ponty demonstrated that constructing the original world of the embodiment concept and self-fashioning requires reconsideration of the direct relationship between the perceiving subject and the outside world. If we confine ourselves to interpreting that relationship in terms of physics or biology, we will have trouble explaining why Cézanne’s paintings have a universal significance that transcends his own physiological and psychological defects. In opposition to these physical or biological interpretive models, Merleau-Ponty uses a symbolist model to explain the direct concepts set up by our perceptual experience. His philosophical reflections on the body attempt to refute the mind-body dualism of Cartesianism and to understand the subject as self-sufficient mind outside the world. In establishing the possibility of the perceptual concept in The Structure of Behavior, he opened up the field of embodiment theory in opposition to the Cartesian hypothesis.