Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-20T00:53:07.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 6 - Motor Intentionality and Our Landscapes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

Timothy D. Mooney
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
Get access

Summary

This chapter is devoted to Merleau-Ponty’s account of motor intentional movement as silhouetted by the Schneider case (that of an injured soldier suffering psychological blindness, cognitive rigidity and impaired motility outside habitual action situations). I show how Merleau-Ponty insightfully understands motor intentionality or motor projection as the work of the body schema organising both our postural changes and our phenomenal fields towards habitual or novel outcomes in a horizonal and context-sensitive manner. Without this sub-reflective projection of somatic action solutions and routes to realisation, we would have an agency-neutral body and a congealed spatiality. I maintain that imagined actions supposing skill transpositions can be extrapolated from Merleau-Ponty’s theory, showing that we are not locked into habitual actions or milieus. I go on to argue that he neglects little acts of reflection that compensate for threats to the flow of ‘skilled coping’, while contending that this shortcoming is easily rectified.

Type
Chapter
Information
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
On the Body Informed
, pp. 130 - 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×