Gustav Schpett's notion of the hermeneutic intuition in the light of actionist approaches to the theory of perception

What makes Gustav Shpet's work "Appearance and Sense" so important is not only that it was one of the first critical reactions to Husserl's programmatic work of transcendental phenomenology, 1 volume of "Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology". Besides its critical stance, the book retains its actuality in the contexts of ongoing discussionsabout foundations and consequences of "hermeneutic transformation" of the initial phenomenological project. Like Heidegger several years later, Shpet, drawing on research principles Husserl's,has revealed what can be called hermeneutic dimension of perceptual experience.But, unlike Heidegger, Shpet conceders this hermeneutical dimension not as a transcendental fundament but rather as immediate content of visual perception. In other words, experience of perception is not the experience of hiding but that of revealing the hermeneutical, or the teleological in terms of Shpet. Similar understanding of hermeneutical contents we find also in the contemporary - "actionist" - theory of perception, basic elements of which has been presented in the recent works of an American philosopher Alva Noe and a British sociologist Tia DeNora. Nevertheless a sketch of the actionist approach to the phenomenon of perception we can find in programmatic article ("On Multiple Realities")by Alfred Schutz, the founder of phenomenological sociology. As a result, all this creates necessary prerequisites for revisiting theaforementioned Shpet's work from the standpoint alternative to the traditional phenomenological lines of thought. To key innovations within contemporary theories of perception belong the following: consideration of perceptive acts as forms of social action and forms of direct access to the world; the broadening of the concept of understanding to include non-conceptual, practical, bodily, for example sensorimotor, forms of understanding. In consequence, perceptual experience obtains, besides a cognitive and onto-logical dimension, also political one.

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