Surging Between Gaps:A Study Of Merleau-Ponty’s Concept Of Style

Previous studies on Merleau-Ponty tend to ignore the background of MerleauPonty’s own thought because of the concern of a certain problem.In his many works,the term "style" appears frequently,reflecting his ambiguous writing characteristics.This course takes style as the key word to cut into the core of his thought,and sorts out the views of Merleau-Ponty on style in the early,middle and late stages,revealing how the term style has been transferred from the stage of Phenomenology of Perception to the investigation of artistic style and humanistic history in the middle and late stages.In Mamay’s early thought,style becomes a powerful example of the perceptual synthesis of the operation of the non-understanding,which embodies the primal experience of the aforementioned stage when we are just in contact with the world.In the early 1950s,Merleau-Ponty extended the role of style in the field of perception to the field of expression,and connected it with the establishment of human culture in the mid-1950s.At this point,Merleau-Ponty completely described the process of style from"perceptual world to cultural world".Through the diachronic analysis of the transformation of the word "style" in Merleau-Ponty’s thought,we find that MerleauPonty tried to get rid of the shadow of the philosophy of consciousness in the early stage and gradually approached the ontology of the body in the later stage,which indicates that Merleau-Ponty’s thought has coherence.This study is divided into four chapters.The introduction introduces the origin of the topic,the significance of the research,the research status of Merleau-Ponty’s style concept and the research methods and paths of this topic.The first chapter,starting with Merleau-Ponty’s refutation of empiricism and intellectualism,introduces the function of stage style in Phenomenology of Perception,summarizes the connotation and characteristics of style,and examines its operation mode.It holds that style embodies the perceptual synthesis based on the body schema of the said stage.The second chapter focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of artistic style in the middle and late period.While tracing the connotation of the previous style in aesthetics and art history,it tries to explore the unique aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s view of style.It further explores the connotation of style with the two important principles of "coherent deformation" and"equivalent system",and expands the correlation between artistic style and the painter’s body movement posture.The third chapter expands the style from the dimension of perception and expression to the dimension of history.In Merleau-Ponty’s opinion,history is also a living body,so the style view of the past art history becomes a process of continuous occurrence and establishment in his opinion.