Perceptive Consciousness and Dream Consciousness. A Phenomenological Description

Abstract

The author’s starting point is genetic phenomenology as elaborated by Merleau-Ponty and, more precisely, his interest in passivity as constitutive of activity. After elucidating the motives that led her to undertake this research, she goes on to describe one phenomenon that is illustrative of passivity: dreaming. This leads her to focus on the whole of Merleau-Ponty’s work, especially his notes from courses on institution and passivity, the interpretation of which entails a return to the ideas of Husserl, Bergson, Freud, Proust, Sartre and even Jung. The article reveals the features of the embodied perceptual consciousness that persists in the dream and in dream consciousness. The author adheres to Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of the Freudian unconscious and discovers related traits in their descriptions of dreams. Finally, she characterizes the nonreductionist hermeneutics posited by Merleau-Ponty in order to interpret it as a descriptive paradigm of the original symbolism that demonstrates its relation to the phenomenology of lived experience.