Perception and Time-Experience in Merleau-Ponty and Bergson

Year 2014, Issue: 23 - Kaygı (23) 2014, 163 - 184, 30.10.2014

Merve Tapınç

https://doi.org/10.20981/kuufefd.87428

Abstract

Both Merleau-Ponty and Bergson underlined the significance of perception and temporal aspect of the subject. However, their account significantly differs. For Merleau-Ponty, the present has priority over past and future, as the subject perceives, acts, and exists in the “present”. Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the priority of the present depends mostly on his prioritizing of perception and the acting subject. Bergson, on the other hand, considers perception in a relation to memory and present in a relation to duration, thus he emphasizes the possibility of organization and dis-organization of habit-world through varying degrees of repetition of useful memory-images. By showing duration as the condition of possibility for the experience of intuition, Bergson reveals the possibility of reversing habitual way of perceiving things.

Keywords

Merleau-Ponty; Bergson; Duration; Perception; Memory; Intuition

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