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Phenomenology, Consciousness and Freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

C. M. T. Hanly
C. M. T. Hanly
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

The phenomenological theory of motivation was first extensively developed by Sartre in his early Sketch of a Theory of Emotions and then in The Transcendence of the Ego, Being and Nothingness, and the Critique de la raison dialectique. Sartre's theory presents three difficulties which were recognized by Merleau-Ponty whose position, as formulated in Phenomenology of Perception, is, in part, an attempt to resolve them. The point of view of this paper is that Merleau-Ponty has not satisfactorily resolved the difficulties and that, moreover, no adaptations of the theory could resolve them short of abandoning phenomenology as such by going beyond it.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , December 1966 , pp. 323 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1966

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References

1 Plato, , The Republic, Bk. IV, 439–440Google Scholar.

2 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. 1, Chap. 6.

3 Sartre, J. P., Being and Nothingness, New York, 1956, p. 40Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. liv.

5 Ibid., p. 63.

6 Ibid., p. 43.

7 See “Breaking Through the Thought Barriers” by Frank, J., in Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, vol. 23, #3Google Scholar.

8 Freud, S., The Interpretation of Dreams, New York, 1961, pp. 598–610Google Scholar

9 Being and Nothingness, p. 44.

10 Cf. Descartes' cosmological concept that preservation takes as much energy as creation.

11 Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, London, 1962, pp. 363–4Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 381.

13 Ibid., p. 380.

11 Ibid., pp. 3–12, 52–53.

15 Ibid., pp. 154 ff., p. 381.

16 Ibid., p. 344.

17 Ibid., p. 452.

18 Ibid., p. 453.

19 Binswanger, L., “The Case of Ellen West” in Existence, A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, ed. May, R. et al., New York, 1958Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 295.

21 E. Minkowski, “A Case of Schizophrenic Depression” in Existence, A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology.

22 Phenomenology of Perception, p. 438.

23 Phenomenology of Perception, p. 442.

24 L. Binswanger, “The Existential Analysis School of Thought” in Existence, New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology.

25 See Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 438–439. Merleau-Ponty would that such situations are crucial for understanding the nature of freedom.

26 Hospers, John makes a similar point in “Meaning and Free Will,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, X, 1950, pp. 316–330. His position in paper is in agreement with the conclusions advanced hereGoogle Scholar.

27 Phenomenology of Perception, p. 395.

28 Ibid., p. 441.