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PHAINOMENA XXV/98-99 THE HORIZONS OF EMBODIMENT 184 Two major influences are of note here: on the one hand, the deep influence of the Gestaltpsychologie and its central concept of Gestalt (form-structure); on the other hand, the organismic theory of Kurt Goldstein and Viktor von Weizsäcker. It would take us too far afield to give an in-depth analysis of the notion of Gestalt and its influence on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy; 3 it is, however, essential to underline the importance it assumes in this context. In these first reflections, the notion of Gestalt allows Merleau-Ponty to circumvent a mechanist approach to the organism, while at the same time not falling prey to vitalist hypotheses. Form, in Merleau-Ponty, is first of all a process, “whenever the properties of a system are modified by every change brought about in a single one of its parts and, on the contrary, are conserved when they all change while maintaining the same relationship among themselves” (Merleau-Ponty 1942: 47). Understanding the organism and behavior as Gestalt allows one to track down a meaning within life and living being, or “intelligibility in the nascent state” (Merleau-Ponty 1942: 207). Structures are, in fact, unities without conceptualization, open unities in which a primordial signification emerges. Applied to living beings, the notion of structure allows us to understand the behavior of the organism while avoiding the extremes of mechanism and vitalism. The organismic theory is of central importance here. The aim of this approach, in fact, was to propose a biological methodology that differs from the atomistic one. Kurt Goldstein aspired to understand living beings (and humans in particular) by overcoming equivocal concepts that had influenced – in a negative way – biological and psychological studies: inferior and superior behaviors, the notion of simplicity, regulation by hierarchy, and the classic distinction between normal and pathological based on quantitative criteria. In contrast, Goldstein’s approach is holistic and organismic, founded on a definition of the organism as a psychosomatic totality open to an environment. In this view, behavior is not a mere response to a stimulus, but already a meaningful reaction to a signal that the organism is able to recognize. 3 For in-depth analyses of the relationship between Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and Gestaltpsychologie cf. Dillon (1971) or Barbaras (2001).
LUCIA ZAIETTA As mentioned briefly, Goldstein arrives at this conclusion through a deep reformulation of the distinction between normal and pathological. In Goldstein’s analysis, disease becomes a heuristic concept that allows us to demonstrate that behavior is a form of significant and irreducible conduct. Symptoms are not a simple deficiency but rather a global response on the part of the individual facing a specific problem (which Goldstein calls a “catastrophic situation”). Disease does not concern the contents of behavior but the structure of the organism; it is not a subtraction from normal conduct but a “qualitative alteration” (Merleau-Ponty 1942: 19), a “new signification of the behavior” (Merleau-Ponty 1942: 65). 4 Observing and describing pathological behavior reminds us that behavior has a structure: normal behavior, therefore, is the auto-realization of the organism. As Goldstein states: “Pathological phenomena are the expression of the fact that the normal relationships between organism and environment have been changed through a change of the organism and that thereby many things that had been adequate for the normal organism are no longer adequate for the modified organism. Disease is shock and danger for existence. Thus a definition of disease requires a conception of the individual nature as a starting point. (Goldstein 1934: 328–329)” 185 From this perspective, auto-realization is the self-actualization of the organism, a fundamental tension that moves the organism and makes its conduct dynamic and meaningful. The organism, in fact, lives in constant negotiation with its environment, in a sort of disequilibrium and tension that constantly permit new orientations. The organism’s behavior consists of movement and perception: the 4 In Phenomenology of Perception too, Merleau-Ponty, starting from Gelb and Goldstein’s analysis of the case of Schneider, adopts this methodology: “It cannot be a question of simply transferring to the normal person what is missing in the patient and what he is trying to recover. Illness, like childhood or like the “primitive” state, is a complete form of existence, and the procedures that it employs in order to replace the normal functions that have been destroyed are themselves pathological phenomena. The normal cannot be deduced from the pathological, and deficiencies cannot be deduced from their substitutions, through a mere change of sign” (Merleau-Ponty 1945: 110).
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e-ISSN 2232-6650 UDK 1 PHAINOMENA R
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