Abstract
The article deals with the relation between a phenomenological theory of motivation and a phenomenological theory of normativity. It focuses especially on Merleau-Ponty and his criticism of Sartre's theory of freedom.
The author shows that the analyses of spontaneous evaluation, developped at the end of the Phenomenology of Perception, offers a theory of normativity which is often only implicit. This normativity is operative in our body, in our relation towards the past and towards society.
The freedom (in Merleau-Ponty definitely not an absolute freedom) is to be defined not by its relation to a particular obstacle, but by its relation to normativity. The freedom conquers itself not through a particular decision, but - as Merleau-Ponty puts this - "through a series of shifts".
