Chi è che sta sognando? Merleau-Ponty su sonno e sogno

Abstract

This paper considers some thesis proposed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty during his lessons on sleeping and dreaming in the mid fifties, also with reference to the contemporary scientific debate. Dreaming and sleeping constitute a privileged perspective for considering the characteristic human interweaving of natural and cultural aspects, of animality and meaning. The immediate association of sleeping with a suspension of consciousness and with an absence of worldly contacts seems problematic. Furthermore the dualistic opposition between conscious activity and bodily passivity seems far less obvious. Besides it appears as not taken for granted that human acting and experiencing could be always considered as first person's phenomena.