I argue that Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze both offer accounts of passivity capable of paving the way for a philosophy of time constitution operating outside the structure of human consciousness. Taking, as a point of departure, the fundamental role that temporalization plays in phenomenology as the universal grounding of givenness, I argue that both Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze offer similar and complementary accounts of “lower levels” of time constitution: they both think through the articulation of a non-anthropomorphic “here and now” that precedes (...) the articulation of a fully-fledged consciousness. I then argue that this passive time constitution, which precedes any human faculty of thought, is de facto open, beyond the “here and now,” to multiple degrees of virtual memory or “pure past.” Such considerations subvert and complexify the common views that equate the animal’s capacity of retention with its capacity to be open to a world. Finally, I suggest that these syntheses of temporalization are not teleologically oriented, that is, their deployment in organic systems of higher complexity is neither their culmination, nor their final stage. The organic syntheses can be made to resurface. For the human subject, this results in the disorganization of thought and the reshaping of sense-making faculties. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to determine what Robert Bernasconi’s body of work in Critical Philosophy of Race can teach us about the way in which we, philosophers and professors of philosophy, ought to treat our institutional heritage. What should we make, for instance, of moral claims made by philosophers of the modern era who – tacitly or explicitly – manifested certain levels of endorsement toward the Atlantic Slave Trade? How should we comprehend the conceptual tools that we have inherited (...) from them, knowing that those were formulated alongside justificatory claims for the enslavement of Africans – claims that we now deem undoubtably and universally immoral? I extract from Bernasconi’s writings an implicit methodology that can be broken down into three main moves: (1) a historiographical work, akin to Michel Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ method, aimed at uncovering the material conditions that allowed for the emergence of philosophical ideas of the past, (2) a dialectical work aimed at interpreting this collection of historical data through the critical lens of race, and (3) a pedagogical work aimed at transforming the practice of academic philosophy in light of the critique. I conclude that his methodological contribution culminates in an invitation to revisit and transform the past of the institution by treating the history of academic philosophy as philosophically and conceptually relevant rather than merely incidental. Such a commitment toward critically engaging the past of our institution urges us to revisit the canon in specific ways. (shrink)

Benjamin Décarie-Daigneault Le présent article se penche sur une préoccupation commune au transcendantalisme husserlien et à la phénoménologie « existentielle » de Merleau-Ponty : la mise au jour des fondements de l’expérience du monde. Par sa méthode « archéologique », Husserl met en lumière, dans les Méditations cartésiennes, les différentes strates de sens qui sous-tendent le phénomène du monde concret. Si cette description a pour point de départ l’ego philosophant qui thématise sa propre expérience, elle a pour point d’arrivée l’ego (...) transcendantal qui se révèle être le foyer ultime qui possibilise et sous-tend le monde dans son être-tel. Loin de s’opposer radicalement à cette thèse, Merleau-Ponty reste fidèle à Husserl en acceptant que le monde n’a de sens que pour autant qu’il se donne à une conscience, mais il considère qu’il est possible pour la philosophie d’atteindre la strate de l’expérience du monde qui précède l’acquisition de son sens. Notre article soutient que cette quête d’une primordialité préobjective est fondée dans l’interprétation merleau-pontienne de certains textes tardifs de Husserl. (shrink)