Abstract

This article is an introduction to the study of the close connection between phenomenology and the investigations on phantoms. We want to show that there is a deep kinship between phenomena and phantoms and that Husserl’s phenomenological project, as well as, more specifically, its original reinstitution by Merleau-Ponty, lead us to think the real on the basis of a reference to phantoms regarded as ontological models. Our analyses will be based more precisely on Merleau-Ponty’s study of the phantom-limb in Phenomenology of Perception. We will contend that the body itself, through the concepts of body schema and of structure [Gestalt], is eventually thought of by Merleau-Ponty as possessing the same mode of being as phantoms.