Merleau-Ponty Dictionary by Landes Donald A.;

Author:Landes, Donald A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Non-thetic/pre-thetic/thetic consciousness or act

The adjective “thetic” stems from Ancient Greek origins where it means either “placed” or “laid down,” and has evolved to apply to a positive statement or a thesis statement. Throughout the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty deploys a distinction between thetic (objective/explicit/act) consciousness and non-thetic (lived/operative) consciousness. The “thetic consciousness” is associated with intellectualist accounts in which consciousness involves an explicit positing of an object in an intellectual act or decision, whereas non-thetic consciousness is a form of intentionality revealed through phenomenological reflection upon lived experience. This non-thetic or pre-thetic consciousness is a more originary form of experience, and provides the material upon which thetic operations might be performed. For instance, I have a non-thetic awareness of the shape of the object I am reaching for, and a sort of gearing of my hand into the solicited shape of the object occurs without any interposed thetic or explicit act. Once the lived experience of the glass has occurred, I can ask “what did I just pick up?” and thereby “thematize” or posit the object as an object in the world, characterized by objective properties such as size, weight, etc. “We uncover [through phenomenology], beneath act or thetic intentionality—and in fact as its very condition of possibility—an operative intentionality already at work prior to every thesis and every judgment” (PhP, 453).

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