PAULA FEIJÓ DE MEDEIROS

This work proposes that the central project of The structure of behavior, first major work of Merleau-Ponty, resides in the abandonment of causal thinking and the emergence, in its place, of a dialectical thought that allows a truly philosophical elaboration of the term structure. It is argued that the elected trajectory for this abandonment is the criticism of the behavioral sciences itself, whose ultimate function is to reveal the ontological prejudices on which they are based. It is thus evident that even the introduction of form as a scientific category is not enough to solve the difficulties inherent to science. Next, we show that the dialectic approach is delineated in the phenomenological description of the ways of existing of perceptual structures. In this sense, we are led to a new transcendental attitude that overcomes the critical solution, places ontology and phenomenology in the same world and opens up to the temporal originality of human dialectics. We thus conclude that Merleau-Ponty’s first thesis already presents an original ontological regime as an alternative to the timeless split of Being that operates both in the naturalism of science and in philosophical criticism.