‘Movement as Disclosive of Being’ Merleau-Ponty: From the Psychology of Gestalt to the Analysis of Movement

Abstract

In this essay we seek to clarify the meaning and theoretical implications of the statement by Merleau-Ponty contained in his 1953 course, Le Monde Sensible et le Monde de l’Expression, according to which movement is ‘revealing of being’. This analysis takes up and comments on chapter 7 of Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt Psychology (dedicated to the issue of movement) and related experiments in particular. We will show that Merleau-Ponty’s idea of ontology of movement emerges from his examination of several exemplary cases. This method of analysis brings to light an idea of similar phenomenology compatible with an experimental phenomenology.

Keywords

• phenomenology
• perception
• movement
• merleau-ponty
• ontology