A poética de um olhar Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

There are constant references to painting in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work, more specifically, to Cézanne's painting. That having been said, one will certainly wonder why Merleau-Ponty calls him so often to mind in his reflections. This piece of writing is, therefore, aimed at revisiting that question, at responding to it in the context of the analogy between philosophy and painting proposed by him. Although his choice is not limited to a point on the line, it may 9 be assumed that, seen through Merleau-Ponty’s eyes, Cézanne is a man whose personal experience renders explicit, in a comprehensive manner, the relationships between body and soul, and, moreover, the circumstances of the activity of expression and meaning. Hence, Merleau-Ponty elects him as the protagonist with the intention of elevating the most intimate and personal expression of "one" man to the experience of "all" men. At the limit, one seeks to understand why thoughts produced in that mind evade the philosophy of his time to share the alchemy of creation with painters, poets, and writers. Merleau-Ponty’s plot? To free the ordinary man from philosophical determinism, but above all to lay bare the fact that knowledge can only be constructed on the condition that the fate of the ordinary man does not remain unknown