The Concept Of Perception Of Merleau - Ponty

In the last chapter of, Merleau-Ponty clearly proposed the conception of phenomenology, by using the method of phenomenological investigation, he found a new perspective to observe the consciousness and its connection with the natural world. When we try to get a clear understanding of the conception of perceptional consciousness, we come into a complicate situation which may provide us with a new theory about sense. By the view of Merleau-Ponty, this new sense/meaning theory is totally different from Husserl's understanding of the conception of sense/meaning (it is transcendental and conceptual), it essentially gives great emphasis on human activities, which bridge the gap between body and soul, and also provides us with the approach to proceed to our criticisms on empiricism and intellectualism, and eventually clears up the obstacles which prevent us to attain the real knowledge of our experiences. Merleau-Ponty thinks that both empiricism (which regards experiences as the accumulation of sensory contents) and intellectualism (which promotes perception to the level of interpretation) can't give a precise definition of perception:perceptional activities are the same to body- intentional activities.