On the threshold of the visible world: the notion of body schema in Merleau-Ponty's courses at the Sorbonne

Abstract

In line with the general goal of a longitudinal study about Merleau-Ponty's use of the body schema notion in his philosophy, in this paper, we look at his course at the Sorbonne, located in an intermediary period of his work. In these courses, the philosopher starts discussions on corporeity, based on the philosophy of the child and psychoanalysis, with the intersubjectivity problem and the body schema theory as the central axes. Merleau-Ponty understands that the acquisition of a single, "total" body scheme implies decentering from oneself, so that one's own body, the other person's body and the world can intertwine in a "relational tissue" that inextricably involves visibility and intra-body thickness. We consider that, in these study, Merleau- Ponty takes an important step towards the notion of flesh as found in his later works.