Department of Philosophy

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Noush Abstract

In an age that welcomes scientific theory and accuracy of evidential data, it is critical that the foundation of the sciences, that is philosophy, be able to continue its reign. Phenomenology amounts to be the greatest sustained attempt to revive metaphysics on an ontological mode where philosophy can exist and perpetuate into the sciences and successfully correct for possible scientific flaws. The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the significance of phenomenology rests in establishing contact with basic experiences and wonder of the world that precedes all kinds of formal and de-formalized research. Consciousness is a project of the world rather than the world being a project of us. The body becomes the mediator between consciousness and the world and Merleau-Ponty in particular criticizes the representationalist theory of consciousness that predated him. From this point on, phenomenological investigation quickly becomes a commitment to understanding the awareness of the possibilities for world engagement as feasible through the human body. This investigation however has taken on the narrative of the masculine bodies that have developed it into philosophical discourse. The tropes of the masculine body inadequately represent the common-sense assumptions of the everyday experiences examined in phenomenology since it deprives half of the population of their sexed bodies, that is, women. The prerogatives of phenomenology, a study investigating consciousness as experienced individually, have unfortunately been insensitive to the peculiarities of the female narrative and have therefore inconvenienced the study in general. The inherent discriminatory elements of socially defined gender roles that limit women and privilege men do not originate with phenomenology but surely permeate the very theories of the study. Existentialist and fellow French phenomenologist Simone de Beauvoir articulates the evidential male-perspective of the study as requiring correction, or at the very least acknowledgment, since phenomenology is promoting itself to be the foundation for the rest of the empirical sciences, and therefore the only appropriate arena for such a projection.