Intencionalidade e dialética na fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

This research starts with Renaud Barbaras' critique of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological project, specifically in relation to the French philosopher's attempt to overcome the problem of the invulnerability of consciousness in relation to the lived world. By analysing Barbaras' critique and his ‘phenomenology of life’, in which the notion of intentionality is central, it will be possible to identify the problems of the Barbarasian reading and indicate the need to revisit Merleau-Ponty's first two works in order to recover their relevance and philosophical potential. In doing so, we are committed to Étienne Bimbenet's interpretation, which highlights Merleau-Ponty's efforts to redefine the human beyond the dualism between consciousness and nature. In this sense, it will be possible to understand that this Merleau-Pontian redefinition must go through the treatment of what Luiz Damon Santos Moutinho called ‘productivity’, the power of signification that, in the ‘philosophies of consciousness’, was attributed strictly to the cognising subject. Therefore, with the help of Bimbenet, we must identify, in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological phase, the figures of ‘productivity’ that are resolutive of his project of removing the invulnerable position of consciousness in relation to the natural world, which Barbaras mistakenly indicated as a failure. With these figures, we can conclude, beyond Bimbenet, that, in Merleau-Ponty, it is a question of thinking the classical dichotomy through the dialectics of Hegel and Marx and, finally, conceiving a dialectical notion of intentionality, capable of intertwining consciousness and nature without cancelling out each of the terms.