Arnold Berleant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Mikel Dufrenne

Abstract

Berleant and Dufrenne were both simultaneously benchmarks in the IAA for many years. They knew each other and Berleant refered to Dufrenne occasionally. Starting from some quotations of Dufrenne by Berleant, I propose to show how both of them differ from Merleau-Ponty when thinking that perception is not only an act of vision but a somatic process. The originality of Berleant associating phenomenology and Anglo-Saxon way of thinking could lead to suggest that Environmental Aesthetics has a feedback effect opening a new reading of Dufrenne.