ABSTRACT
The Primacy of Perception, the title of one of Merleau-Ponty’s most famous essays, gives us a hint as to how most phenomenologists view perception. It is considered to be primary. The phenomenological dictum ‘to the things themselves’ can be seen as a call for a return to the perceptual world that is prior to and a precondition for any scientific conceptualization and articulation. As both Merleau-Ponty and Husserl point out, there is a more original relation to the world than the one manifested in scientific rationality. In our pre-scientific perceptual encounter with the world, the world is given concretely, sensuously, and intuitively. In daily life, we do not interact with ideal theoretical objects, but with tools and values, with pictures, statues, books, tables, houses, friends, and family (Husserl 1952/1989, p. 27), and our lives are guided by practical concerns. Phenomenologists remind us that our knowledge of the world, including our scientific knowledge, arises primarily from a first-and second-person perspective, and that science would be impossible without this experiential dimension.
