Merleau-ponty’s Critical Approach to Husserl’s Intentionality

In the phenomenology of perception, Merleau-Ponty tries to transcend the traditional explanation of intentionality and therefore he describes the phenomenology of the body. According to Merleau-ponty, there is no separation between the world and consciousness and these two are completely tied together. Conciseness for Merleau-ponty is not a mere subject which constitute the eternal essences and natures and gives meaning to phenomena, but it is the body-subject that direct toward the world and cannot be separated from this field of action in the world. The objects of this subject-body are also in the phenomenal fielding that determined by directing the lived body toward them and it comes out of ambiguity and thus, their meaning is born. Accordingly, intentionality for Merleau -Ponty, is the orientation in the world and directedness toward the world itself, and the intentional states are realized in collisions or physical states in a physical and concrete environment. In this paper, we try to provide an interpretation of the concept of intentionality from the perspective of Merleau-ponty, which he calls it "practical intentionality", and we want to express its differences and similarities with Husserl’s intentionality. The main difference between the views of these two philosophers is in Merleau-ponty’s criticism on Husserl’s of Noesis-Noema structure. He claims that meaning is intrinsic to the phenomenal field and it is not possible to analyze it by a distinction between matter and form.