affectivity

is a relation between an individualized being and the preindividual milieu.

from 'fractology': This term designates a relation between an individualized being and the pre-individual milieu... it is thus heterogeneous to individualized reality. This is why Simondon claims that affectivity, more than perception, indicates a spirituality that is greater than the individualized being (the Sublime) because perception is merely the functions of the structures interior to this being (L'Individuation psychique et collective, p. 108-hereafter cited as IPC). Simondon writes that affectivity is the ground of emotion, as perception is the ground of action (107). (https://fractalontology.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/a-short-list-of-gilbert-simondons-vocabulary/

is that part of perception which is characterized by what has significance 'for us'. Perception of things is not neutral but fundamentally imbued from the start by what has significance us. A being exist, by existing through desire or love.

For Merleau-Ponty, even the primary structuration of space by orientations and directedness of the lived body in respect to tthe other, the world, and worldly objects, occurs as fundamentally affective, characterized by passive affective intentionality rather than by active goal-oriented movement. 'As I read Merleau-Ponty, affectivity is a principle layer of subjectivity but it is also intertwined with other 'layers' of experience: no perception is neutral, i.e., without affective aspects. Affectivity is not a layer to be added to 'neutral' being but belongs to all perception. So, it is always already found in the structures of subjectivity. Based on his conception of affectivity as fundamental to all experience, Merleau-Ponty develops an idea of love and desire as paradigmatic forms of affections: 'If then we want to bring to light th e birth of being for us, we must finally look at that area of experience which clearly has significance and reali ty only for us, and that is our affective life. Let us try to see how a thing or a being begins to exist for us through desi re or love and we shall thereby come to understand better how things and beings can exist in general' (POP, 154/PP, 180). In Merleau-Ponty's view, inquiries into love and desire demonstrate how our relations to our selves, to o chers, and to the world are always affective.'

affectivity, n.Definitions

affectivity