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Merleau-Ponty; Behavior; Form; Structure; Perception; Expression; Silence.
If there is a theme that spans though the entire philosophical trajectory of Merleau-Ponty and which, both, places him in the interior of a tradition inaugurated by Descartes as well as in radical opposition to this same tradition, that would be the problem of the relations of consciousness and nature. It is posed as the orienting question in his first published book, The structure of behaviour, and is also present in Phenomenology of Perception; in both of these texts it is treated in terms of a shifting of the comprehension, since Descartes, of experience and perception, anchoring them in the facticity of the body proper, explicating in perception and in experience a ground of expression. The same theme is present in the post- Phenomenology writings, only this time in the form of an interrogation towards the centrality of expression and language. It is in this sense that we propose here that The structure of behavior open up to questions that will, from then on, occupy the philosopher, that this text does not get expired in view of the movements that followed it by the author, rather, that it gained in profundity, that if it already introduces us to axial issues that will guide future researches, simultaneously, it becomes, as the work progress, an aspect of the totality of the work, in the sense that we may now say that it illuminates and is illuminated by the thought that succeeds it. Our first movement (chapter 1) focus on his critique of a Cartesianism established and which dominates modern philosophy and science, an orientation to objectivism that ignores and even subverts naïve experience and its fecundity, by bringing to light the notion of silence of the perceived world. Here we point out to a particular reading of Descartes that brings to mind the notion of the unthought which will be elaborated explicitly in the last writings, in special, in the essay “The philosopher and its shadow”. In chapters 2 and 3 we expound his critique to Gestalttheorie and to Behaviorism which, simultaneously, points out its insufficiency, since they’re never able to detach themselves from the dichotomies sedimented since Descartes, as well as to what they have of originary, that is, the notions of behavior and form. By the appropriation and radicalization of these notions, the relations between consciousness and world (or between animal and its milieu) appear ambiguous, indicating the necessity of a thinking of ambiguity that will permeates his philosophical trajectory. In the last section, we bring a reflection on how the themes addressed in chapters 1, 2, and 3 reverberate in the whole of the writings of Merleau-Ponty. Finally, I bring a short reflection on the development more explicit by the philosopher that points towards a philosophy as writing (écriture), writing such that it is both; convocated by the silence and involved by silence. If we propose, therefore, that The Structure of Behaviour has a sense that extends beyond the work itself, this is because the ambiguous aspect of our relation with the world, the silence of the perceived world, and the comprehension of perception of as already involved by expression, themes introduced in this inaugural text, are present and govern central aspects of his philosophical path.