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Speaking Bodies: Communication and Freedom in Fichte and Merleau-Ponty

Drawing on the ideas of J.G. Fichte and M. Merleau-Ponty, I argue that experience and freedom are intersubjective, linguistic, and bodily. In the first chapter, I take up Fichte's three "fundamental principles" from the Science of Knowledge alongside his ideas of embodiment and intersubjectivity from the Foundations of Natural Right to show that all experience is an indefinite mixture of self and not-self, and, therefore, that both the experiences of self-consciousness and its freedom must also be accomplished with reference to the not-self, and particularly others. The second chapter is an examination of Merleau-Ponty's account of expression in his Phenomenology of Perception. The key insight I pursue here is that the medium of expression, which makes possible all significance, is bodily and intersubjective, and that any expressive act is therefore both self-opaque and soliciting cooperation. In the end, I turn to how this cooperation, i.e. freedom, should be enacted.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:ICS.10756/271444
Date2012 May 1900
CreatorsMorrisey, Jeffrey James
ContributorsHoff, Shannon, Institute for Christian Studies
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Rightshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/, Attribution, NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

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