An Interpretation of Perception: Cassirer – Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

R. Bemet has extended to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception a distinction that can be drawn in E. Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms between perception in a strict sense (Wahrnehmung), which is expressive and is linked to myth, and perception in a broad sense (Anschauung), which is linked to language and exhibits a more elaborated structure. Firstly, this article attempts to establish how far the distinction can be applied to M. Merleau-Ponty's thought by drawing upon his acknowledgment that there are phenomenological and existential analyses implied in Cassirer's work, and that the notion of "symbolic pregnancy" points to a shared end. Secondly, it is shown how quasi-linguistic perception compels us to approach one of Merleau-Ponty's fundamental problems, namely, that one of the relationship between a "natural expression" and a linguistic expression that takes up and enlarges the expression manifested in the "archeology of the perceptual world."