A phenomenological approach to the issue of technical agency in Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

Space, body and habit delimit in this work the environment in which the issue of technical agency is located, as a modality of praxis that the subject exercises in the world. In Phénoménologie de la perception Merleau-Ponty makes an analysis that helps to trace how its meaning conforms to the situation in which the behavior of the subject with tools in experience is circumscribed. A reconstruction of these practices will require exhibiting the vital mechanisms that shape an effective version of the tool’s horizon of possibilities. There is something that escapes theoretical reading, which has to do with the strength and intensity of the perceptions inherent in the «incarnate» subject’s behavior. This plus of meaning that exceeds the objective range contributes, without more, to the elemental constitution of the practice in a way that only a direct exploration of the act and its feeling provides us. In this way, the complexity and limitations of the experience that appear with an immanent reading of its meaning can be addressed.