2016/06/28 by Samantha Matherne · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Art, Aesthetics, and Perception #Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy #Philosophy, Science, and History
paper · doi:10.1515/agph-2016-0009
crossref issued 2016/06/28 · crossref published 2016/06/28 · crossref published-online 2016/06/28 · crossref published-print 2016/06/28 · openalex publication_date 2016/06/28 · crossref created 2021/02/26 · crossref deposited 2021/02/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract: It has become typical to read Kant and Merleau-Ponty as offering competing approaches to perceptual experience. Kant is interpreted as an ‘intellectualist’ who regards perception as conceptual ‘all the way out’, while Merleau-Ponty is seen as Kant’s challenger, who argues that perception involves non-conceptual, embodied ‘coping’. In this paper, however, I argue that a closer examination of their views of perception, especially with respect to the notion of ‘schematism’, reveals a great deal of historical and philosophical continuity between them. By analyzing Kant’s theory of schematism, the interpretation of it by the Neo-Kantian Pierre Lachièze-Rey, and Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the body schema, we find that aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception are better understood as a development of Kant’s theory of perception.