The topic of deafblindness appears episodically in phenomenological analyses of perception and human relationship to the world. For example, E. Cassirer deduces from the well-described famous example of the deaf-blind H. Keller, who not only mastered sign language for essential communication with her surroundings but even became the author of several literary works, that “even the world of a deaf, dumb and a blind child can become incomparably wider and richer than the world of the most advanced animals.” M. Merleau-Ponty, in Phenomenology of Perception, also mentions H. Keller in passing in a passage focused on synaesthesia.
The contribution aims first to present the context in which the situation of deaf-blind people becomes an example within the framework of a phenomenological description of the human relationship to the world (a theme that appears in the works of authors following the thinkers mentioned above). On the other hand, however, in some cases, phenomenology becomes a tool through which experts in the field of so-called congenital deaf-blind studies shed light on how a deaf-blind person experiences the world and how she discovers the world through, among other things, communication with sighted and hearing people around her (as an example we can mention D. Goode’s book A World Without Words). The second goal of the contribution is to show what the phenomenological analysis shows as beneficial for this area. The conclusion is that the debate between the two sides can be mutually beneficial.