Estudos e Pesquisas em Psicologia
ISSN 1808-4281
MARCON, Gilberto Hoffmann FURLAN, Reinaldo. Self and Authenticity: Conceptual Dilemmas under Merleau-Ponty's Perspective. Estud. pesqui. psicol. []. 2020, 20, spe, pp.1273-1292. ISSN 1808-4281. https://doi.org/10.12957/epp.2020.56661.
We propose to map the implications of the phenomenological thought for the correlated themes of self and authenticity, with an emphasis on the merleau-pontyan perspective. Throughout the different understandings of the identitary, unitary and relational factors of human experience, we observe three tension axes around which the concept of self can be articulated: constancy or change, particularity or universality and person or world. Under the different descriptive approaches of this field of problems, such epistemological dilemmas are redoubled in ethical tensions when we refer to the question of authenticity. While the philosophies of Heidegger and Sartre, under different approaches, grant relative centrality to the issue of authenticity, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, although situated in direct dialogue with these contributions from the same Husserlian roots, does not give the theme the same explicit importance. By focusing on the eminently ambiguous character of corporeality, Merleau-Ponty offers an original understanding of the experience of the self and the authentic being: as opposed to the radical possibility of retreat, the radical inherence of contact. We conclude that such perspective presents as a gain the qualification of a descriptive apprehension, without falling into contradiction, of what there is of concreteness in the indeterminate, universal in singularization and passive in freedom - and vice versa, for all cases.
: phenomenology; authenticity; self; identity; Merleau-Ponty.