This paper has two aims. The first is to use contemporary discussions of naïve realist theories of perception to offer an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception. The second is to use consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception to outline a distinctive version of a naïve realist theory of perception. In a Merleau-Pontian spirit, these two aims are inter-dependent.

Environmental thinkers often suppose that the natural world (or some parts of it, at least) exists in its own right, independent of human concerns. The arguments developed in this paper suggest that it is possible to do justice to this thought without endorsing some form of metaphysical realism. Thus the early sections look to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception to develop an anti-realist account of the independent reality of the natural world, one, it is argued, that has certain (...) advantages over the accounts proffered by 'environmental realists'. The concluding sections draw upon certain of Merleau-Ponty's later works to defend a rather bolder claim: that the conceptions of realism endorsed by environmental thinkers are not just ill equipped but, in fact, unable to acknowledge what may be provisionally referred to as the more-than-human dimension of reality. (shrink)

This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to develop new and promising solutions to contemporary debates about perception. In providing an extension and defense of Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual content and of the relation between perception and the world, it demonstrates the enduring value of Merleau-Ponty’s insights for philosophy of perception today. -/- The author focuses on two main topics: the contents and the nature of perception. In the first half of this book, the author (...) tackles debates about the content of perception, namely, what sorts of properties or features of the world reveal themselves to us in perception and in what modes. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s description of perceptual “sense,” the author argues that perception has a unique kind of content, which cannot be adequately described in terms of sensations or concepts. He then shows how this account of perceptual sense can clarify debates about the richness of perceptual content, including whether we can perceive moral properties. In the second half, he turns to the nature of perception. Here he argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual intentionality makes available a powerful combination of the core insights of two main contemporary approaches to this question: realism and intentionalism. The author shows how this combination can be developed, defends it from objections, and explains how it is equipped to deal with problems posed by the existence of illusions and hallucinations. -/- Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on phenomenology and the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

- Brings a new dimension to thinking about philosophical materialism and realism in the wake of phenomenology and deconstruction - Challenges speculative realism’s critique of contemporary Continental philosophy as correlationism - Uses Merleau-Ponty and Nancy to develop an ontology that respects the materiality and exteriority of what exists without reinstating the mind–world divide - Shows how Merleau-Ponty and Nancy overcome the Cartesian presupposition at work in current realist appeal to step out of our own (...) thoughts to reach the ‘great outdoors’ - Provides an alternative to the phenomenological reduction of being to sense - Defends anthropomorphism as a way of overcoming the Cartesian–Sartrian ontology of the object -/- Marie-Eve Morin proposes a reinterpretation of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and Nancy from the perspective of realist and object-oriented tendencies in contemporary philosophy. The realist critique of subject-centred anthropocentric thinking indicates the danger, inherent in the phenomenological approach, of reducing being to sense. Morin demonstrates how Merleau-Ponty and Nancy avoid this pitfall through the development of ontologies that respect the materiality and exteriority of what exists without reaffirming the Cartesian divide between mind and world. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore Merleau-Ponty’s ambivalent relationship with Kant’s transcendental philosophy. I begin by looking at several points of convergence between Kant and Merleau-Ponty, focusing on the affinities between Kant’s account of transcendental realism and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of objective thought. I then show how Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of Kant’s paradox of asymmetrical objects points to a parallel in Kant’s thought to Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of (...) perception. In the second part of the paper, I show why Merleau-Ponty believes that, despite the promise of Kant’s thought, he fails to adequately escape from objective thought. After presenting the central claims of the transcendental deduction, I piece together Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of it by answering three questions: For Merleau-Ponty, how do we encounter the world prior to reflection? How is experience constituted? And what leads Kant to mischaracterise experience in his own transcendental philosophy? (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s account of phenomena, or appearances, and their relation to things themselves, is obviously central to his project as a Phenomenologist. And yet there is no agreed upon interpretation of the account of appearance that he gives in the Phenomenology of Perception: many commentators suggest that that work is ultimately either Idealist or Realist, or even that his account of appearance there is simply inconsistent. In this article, I argue that Merleau-Ponty does, in fact, offer a (...) coherent alternative to Realism and Idealism about appearances in the Phenomenology, and I examine some key features of the account that often give rise to the suspicion of inconsistency. I show that these features only appear inconsistent if we adopt certain assumptions about appearance that Merleau-Ponty would reject, and that we have good reason to question as well. (shrink)

The author argues that merleau-Ponty's conception of his task as a philosopher changed between "the structure of behavior" (1942) and "the phenomenology of perception" (1945) and that the latter is accordingly written in a nonscientific style susceptible of misinterpretation. Focusing first on the earlier work, He examines terminological confusions and logical difficulties in merleau-Ponty's critique of realism, And argues that the central concept of form is scientifically useless and philosophically unnecessary. He then discusses merleau- (...) class='Hi'>Ponty's later views on language before considering his rejection of objectivism and formulating the significant philosophical issues raised by his work. (staff). (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that Merleau-Ponty’s position in Phenomenology of Perception is a unique form of transcendental idealism. The general claim is that in spite of his critique of “Kantianism,” Merleau-Ponty’s position comes out as a form of transcendental idealism that takes the perceptual processes of the lived body as the transcendental constituting condition for the possibility of experience. In this article I critically appraise this claim. I argue that if the term “idealist” is intended (...) in a sufficiently similar sense to Kant’s usage of the term in naming his position as a “transcendental idealism” then it is a misrepresentation to subsume Merleau-Ponty’s position under that term. This is because Merleau-Ponty rejects the transcendental metaphysics of the reflecting subject that underpins transcendental idealism. In its place he advocates a methodological transcendentalism that, whilst being anti-realist, is not idealist. Thus to call his position “a new kind of transcendental idealism,” as Sebastian Gardner has, is to misunderstand the significance of his existentialist break with what he sees as the “intellectualism” of this position. (shrink)

In this chapter, I draw on French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of perception and corporeal sensibility to consider the significance of human situatedness as expressed via place and place experience. To illustrate how Merleau-Ponty’s conceptual understanding might be applied to real-world place experiences, I draw on two sources of experiential evidence, the first of which is a passage from Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez’s magical-realist novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The second source is a set (...) of first-person observations describing events and situations that I happened to take note of during weekday walks between my home and university office over the course of several months. My aim is to use these two narrative accounts as a means to illustrate, via vignettes of everyday human experience, Merleau-Ponty’s central concepts of perception, body-subject, and lived embodiment. I contend that these accounts substantiate Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological claims and point to additional significant elements of human situatedness and place experience. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to an embodied-enactive account of mathematical cognition. I first identify the main points of interest in the current discussions of embodied higher cognition and explain how they relate to Merleau-Ponty and his sources, in particular Husserl’s late works. Subsequently, I explain these convergences in greater detail by more specifically discussing the domains of geometry and algebra and by clarifying the role of gestalt psychology in Merleau-Ponty’s account. Beyond (...) that, I explain how, for Merleau-Ponty, mathematical cognition requires not only the presence and actual manipulation of some concrete perceptible symbols but, more strongly, how it is fundamentally linked to the structural transformation of the concrete configurations of symbolic systems to which these symbols appertain. Furthemore, I fill a gap in the literature by explaining Merleau-Ponty’s claim that these structural transformations are operated through motor intentionality. This makes it possible, in turn, to contrast Merleau-Ponty’s approach to ontologically idealistic and realistic views on mathematical objects. On Merleau-Ponty’s account, mathematical objects are relational entities, that is, gestalts that necessarily imply situated cognizers to whom they afford a specific type of engagement in the world and on whom they depend in their eventual structural transformations. I argue that, by attributing a strongly constitutive role to phenomenal configurations and their motor transformation in mathematical thinking, Merleau-Ponty contributes to clarifying the worldly, historical, and socio-cultural aspects of mathematical truths without compromising what we perceive as their universality, certainty, and necessity. (shrink)

The philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and the later Wittgenstein are shown to yield a common position opposing 'realist' attempts to reduce appearance, sense, and meaning to perception-independent objects and relations. Their 'Gestalt Philosophy' thus constitutes a new form of 'anti- realism'.

On the face of it, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views bear a strong resemblance to contemporary disjunctivist theories of perception, especially John McDowell’s epistemological disjunctivism. Like McDowell (and other disjunctivists), Merleau-Ponty seems to be a direct realist about perception and holds that veridical and illusory perceptions are distinct. This paper furthers this comparison. Furthermore, it is argued that elements of Merleau-Ponty’s thought provide a stronger case for McDowell’s kind of epistemological view than McDowell himself provides. (...) class='Hi'>Merleau-Ponty’s early thought can be used to develop a unique version of epistemological disjunctivism that is worth consideration alongside contemporary views on perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

The trajectory of Merleau-Ponty’s career is often seen as a progressive development: he begins by analyzing scientific consciousness in The Structure of Behavior, complements that account with a phenomenological analysis of behavior as lived in Phenomenology of Perception, and then overcomes the “philosophy of consciousness” to which the earlier texts are committed in the turn toward an ontology of flesh in The Visible and the Invisible. Through close readings of Merleau-Ponty’s engagements with Gestalt psychology in The (...) Structure of Behavior, I argue that the immanent critique of Gestalt theory in that text already anticipates the chiasmic logic of flesh. This challenges the idea of a turn in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I begin by outlining the elemental, carnal, and reversible status of flesh. With careful attention to his source materials, I then distinguish Merleau-Ponty’s appropriations of Gestalt theoretical insights from his critical adaptations, defending three claims: (1) The Structure of Behavior borrows insights from Gestalt theorists that are undermined by their own, realistic ontology; (2) it modifies those insights to explicitly acknowledge the elemental status of nature; and (3) those modifications enable Merleau-Ponty to re-interpret Gestalt psychologists’ empirical findings, outlining how consciousness must emerge from nature as both carnal and reversible. (shrink)

Is materialism right to claim that the world of everyday-life experience – the phenomenal world – is nothing but an illusion produced in physical reality, notably in the brain? Or is Merleau-Ponty right when he defends the fundamental character of the phenomenal world while rejecting physical realism? I address these questions by exploring the nature of the body proper in Merleau-Ponty and Plessner, arguing that physical and phenomenal realism are not mutually exclusive but complementary. (...) The argument includes a close examination of the relationships between scientific and pre-scientific perspectives, between living and non-living things, and between humans and animals. (shrink)

Phenomenology’s reversal of naturalism hinges on the central claim that the worldly objects that we experience acquire their ontological solidity throughout series of intentional acts that are accomplished over the course of our subjective and intersubjective lives. This posture has historically given rise to realist critiques stating that such a “correlational” ontology undermines our capacity to formulate a coherent discourse on generative natural events that predate humans, such as the Big Bang, the Earth’s accretion, the formation of the oceans, etc. (...) In this paper, I articulate a Merleau-Pontian response to this problem. I establish a continuity between the temporality that is at play in the genesis of empirical bodies and the pre-objective tension that precedes perceptual givenness. I therefore suggest treating the past of nature as a transcendental past, always at work within our present experience, instead of an objective moment that would have determined in advance a causal chain of events. (shrink)

From his earliest work forward, phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempted to develop a new ontology of nature that would avoid the antinomies of realism and idealism by showing that nature has its own intrinsic sense which is prior to reflection. The key to this new ontology was the concept of form, which he appropriated from Gestalt psychology. However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to give a positive characterization of the phenomenon of form which would clarify its ontological status. Evan (...) Thompson has recently taken up Merleau-Ponty’s ontology as the basis for a new, “enactive” approach to cognitive science, synthesizing it with concepts from dynamic systems theory and Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis. However, Thompson does not quite succeed in resolving the ambiguities in Merleau-Ponty’s account of form. This article builds on an indication from Thompson in order to propose a new account of form as asymmetry, and of the genesis of form in nature as symmetry-breaking. These concepts help us to escape the antinomies of Modern thought by showing how nature is the autoproduction of a sense which can only be known by an embodied perceiver. (shrink)

Langan believes that the writings of Merleau-Ponty "do not merely parallel roughly the three Kantian Critiques but... the development they reveal is impelled by the same internal necessity implicit in both philosophers' transcendental starting point." This interpretive scheme, like many sweeping generalizations sprinkled throughout the book, begs more questions than it solves. What exactly is the transcendental starting point? Does Merleau-Ponty believe that the claims of reason are wholly provisory and that "their value is essentially practical"? (...) Does he make a sharp distinction between the theoretical and the practical? If Langan believes that the two latter questions should be answered affirmatively, then his overall interpretation is downright misleading. Moreover, continual use is made of a whole battery of terms requiring clarification—e.g., "given," "dialectic," "ontological," "sense," "natural world." But Langan has captured much of the spirit of Merleau-Ponty's thought—especially in Chapter 2, "Incarnated Intentionality," a helpful, imaginative reconstruction of The Phenomenology of Perception. And in the last chapter he rightly attacks Merleau-Ponty for his vacillation between realistic and idealistic points of view. But, almost entirely on the basis of a few textual citations, Langan quickly pushes Merleau-Ponty into the idealist camp. If our critic is "convinced that although description from the transcendental viewpoint may invite disaster, it does not necessarily lead to it," then where did Merleau-Ponty make a wrong turn? Or did he?—A. P. (shrink)

Jakob von Uexküll’s (1864-1944) account of Umwelt has been proposed as a mediating concept to bridge the gap between ecological psychology’s realism about environmental information and enactivism’s emphasis on the organism’s active role in constructing the meaningful world it inhabits. If successful, this move would constitute a significant step towards establishing a single ecological-enactive framework for cognitive science. However, Uexküll’s thought itself contains different perspectives that are in tension with each other, and the concept of Umwelt is developed in (...) representationalist terms that conflict with the commitments of both enactivism and ecological psychology. One central issue shared by all these approaches is the problem of how a living being experiences its environment. In this paper, we will look at Uexküll’s reception in French philosophy and highlight the different ways in which the concept of Umwelt functions in the work of Georges Canguilhem, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze. This analysis helps clarify different aspects of Uexküll’s thought and the deeper philosophical implications of importing his concepts into embodied cognitive science. This paper is part of a recent trend in which enactivism engages with continental philosophy in a way that both deepens and transcends the traditional links to phenomenology, including most recently the thought of Georg W. F. Hegel and Gilbert Simondon. However, no more than a brief outline and introduction to the potentials and challenges of this complex conceptual intersection can be given here. Our hope is that it serves to make more explicit the philosophical issues that are at stake for cognitive science in the question of experienced environments, while charting a useful course for future research. (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)

Merleau-Ponty disparaît brusquement en 1961, laissant inachevée une œuvre essentielle qui devait fixer la signification ultime de toutes ses recherches antérieures et qui nourrira de nombreux courants de la philosophie contemporaine. Le propos du présent ouvrage est à la fois d'en tenter une lecture, c'est-à-dire une reconstitution aussi précise que possible s'appuyant de manière privilégiée sur les notes de travail posthumes, et de prendre la mesure de cette " intra-ontologie " que Merleau-Ponty considérait comme l'accomplissement nécessaire (...) de la phénoménologie husserlienne. L'ambition de cette ontologie est d'assumer, c'est-à-dire de dépasser la " diplopie " de l'ontologie occidentale depuis Descartes, la tension entre la reconnaissance d'un ordre brut de l'existence, irréductible aux thématisations de la science, et la nécessité de fonder la connaissance et l'objectivité. Une telle entreprise ne peut aboutir qu'au prix d'un changement de terrain radical. Celui-ci passe d'abord par la dénonciation du " positivisme " ontologique à l'œuvre dans la revendication réaliste du fait, dans la position intellectualiste de l'eidos, comme dans la tentative de dépasser dialectiquement leur opposition. Il s'accomplit sous la forme d'un mouvement régressif qui, de l'expression, fait retour vers le logos originaire en lequel elle s'enracine, mettant ainsi à jour un univers de l'essence sauvage, sol phénoménologique ultime que les notions de Chair et de Dimension visent à thématiser. Celles-ci permettent de penser une unité et une signifiance du monde qui ne compromettent pas sa profondeur originaire, une expression qui n'est pas ordonnée à la positivité d'un eidos ou d'un telos, une phénoménalisation qui excède de toutes parts les phénomènes qu'elle déploie. L'ambition de cet ouvrage est ainsi de tenter de restituer à l'ontologie de Merleau-Ponty la place qui lui revient: par-delà Husserl et Heidegger. (shrink)

Few researchers of the past made sense of the collapse of representations in the quantum domain, and looked for a new process of sense-making below the level of representations: the level of the phenomenology of perception and action; the level of the elaboration of knowledge out of experience. But some recent philosophical readings of quantum physics all point in this direction. They all recognize the fact that the quantum revolution is a revolution in our conception of knowledge. In these recent (...) readings of quantum physics, quantum states are primarily generators of probabilistic valuations. Accordingly, they should not be seen as statements about what is the case, but as statements about what each agent can reasonably expect to be the case. Three features of such non-interpretational, non-committal approaches to quantum physics strongly evoke the phenomenological epistemology. These are: their deliberately first-person stance; their suspension of judgment about a presumably external domain of objects, and subsequent redirection of attention towards the activity of constituting these objects; their perception-like conception of quantum knowledge. But beyond phenomenological epistemology, these new approaches of quantum physics also make implicit use of a phenomenological ontology. Chris Fuch’s participatory realism thus formulates a non-external variety of realism for one who is deeply immersed in reality. But participatory realism strongly resembles Merleau-Ponty’s endo-ontology, which is a phenomenological ontology for one who deeply participates in Being. This remarkable analogy is supported by Merleau-Ponty himself. Indeed, 50 years before QBism, Merleau-Ponty acknowledged the strong kinship between the status of quantum mechanics and his phenomenology of embodiment. He did so in two texts that remained unpublished until after his death: Visible and invisible, and the Lectures on Nature. The final part of this article is then devoted to a study of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of quantum physics. (shrink)

There is a chasm in current analytic philosophy of perception between disjunctivists (and naïve realists), on the one hand, and ‘conjunctivists’ (intentionalists), on the other. For more than a decade, scholars of phenomenology have debated how classical phenomenologists such as Husserl and Merleau‐Ponty are to be located vis‐à‐vis this chasm. While there seems to be an emerging consensus that Merleau‐Ponty was a disjunctivist avant la lettre, how to interpret Husserl remains contested.

Resumen Este artículo plantea la tesis de que la filosofía fenomenológica de la percepción de Merleau-Ponty, en la medida en que es crítica tanto del empirismo como del idealismo, apunta hacia una forma de realismo. Para argumentar en favor de esta idea y mostrar la vigencia del pensador francés, se contrastan los planteamientos de éste con posturas del “realismo especulativo” de Meillassoux, del “nuevo realismo” de Gabriel y del “realismo plural” de Taylor y Dreyfus. Se propone el concepto (...) de “realismo ontológico” para apuntalar la postura de Merleau-Ponty y a los planteamientos de este ensayo.This essay claims that the thesis of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, insofar that it criticizes both empirism and idealism, points towards a form of realism. To argue this, and to show the validity of the work of the French thinker, I contrast his thoughts with the approaches of “speculative realism” of Meillassoux, of the “new realism” of Gabriel and of “plural realism” of Taylor and Dreyfus. I propose the concept of “ontological realism” in order to support the posture of Merleau-Ponty and the arguments of this essay. (shrink)

La structure du comportement details consciousness-nature relations by navigating between realist and intellectualist alternatives. A phenomenological reading of form guides its attempt to formulate a view that does not reduce consciousness to matter or perceptual structure to a product of mind. I show that this strategy relies on hitherto overlooked idealist commitments. Forms are perceived objects whose intentional structure is intelligibly organized. Having denied that forms are constituted by mind or emergent from matter, Merleau-Ponty likens form-constitution to an (...) ideal process of intentional self-organization. Despite recognizing that Gestalt psychology develops fruitful models of perceptual self-organization, and adopting the transcendental view that form is significant for consciousness, his revisionary interpretation of form outstrips these accounts’ ontologies of mind and nature, and is better understood in light of a post-Kantian philosophical heritage. These results cast Merleau-Ponty’s relation to the Gestalt, post-Kantian, and phenomenological traditions in new light, challenge naturalizing interpretations of Structure, and motivate a rethinking of the status of metaphysics in his early thought. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the epistemological implications of the notion of nature and of natural experience for the phenomenological approach worked out by Merleau- Ponty before and after the Phenomenology of Perception. Nature plays a decisive role in Merleau-Ponty’s approach to phenomenology and to philosophy as a whole. The subject is “in” nature and its attachments to nature are to be shown through a discussion of all those scientific approaches that can offer a clue in (...) this respect. But at the same time subjectivity is the place where these very attachments come to their truth. How to think about this mutual implication without either resorting to idealism or falling back into a pre-phenomenological realism? Is it possible to simply speak about nature without at the same time taking into consideration that particular natural being which is the incarnated subject? But if the subject is taken into consideration, what are the consequences for the ontological approach to nature? A close discussion of the lectures on Nature provides a fundamental clue in order to disentangle the riddle of the “flesh” as mutual intertwining of subjectivity and world. (shrink)

This book connects recent developments in speculative realism, new materialism, and eco-phenomenology to articulate an approach to wonder that escapes the connected traps of anthropocentrism and correlationism. Brian Onishi argues that wonder has explanatory power for the constitution of the world and the organization of meaning. To do this, he appeals to both fiction (speculative and Weird fiction in particular) and quantum physics. More specifically, he argues that the focus of Weird fiction on impossible experiences and a feeling of (...) something just beyond the limits of one’s grasp dramatizes the speculative reach beyond the limits of our understanding. But more than a tool for knowledge acquisition, wonder is an organizing property of objects. Like the collapse of superposition in quantum physics, reality is constituted when objects reveal themselves to other objects and thereby organize themselves into complex objects. Since no relation is exhaustive, the capacity to wonder remains at a material level, and the possibility of reorganization is ever present. Ultimately, Onishi argues for a speculative eco-phenomenology with wonder as an engine for a Weird environmental ethics. (shrink)

This paper deals with the role played by science in the elaboration of a philosophical image of nature. In particular, I will consider two alternative approaches. On the one hand, I will look at Sellars’ distinction between the manifest image of man, stemmed from common sense framework, and the scientific image, which involves the postulation of imperceptible entities to explain the behaviour of perceptible things. On the other hand, I will focus on Merleau-Ponty’s redefinition of the Husserlian distinction (...) between the natural dimension of lifeworld and the artificial horizon of scientific attitude. I will show that Sellars’ scientific realism turns out to be a mere reduction of Nature to complexes of physical particles; by contrast, Merleau-Ponty’s emergentism describes Nature as an articulated structure divided in different layers, each of them understood as a self-organizing totality. Accordingly, I claim that Merleau-Ponty’s rehabilitation of Philosophy of Nature, as an attempt to think the complexity of reality, becomes an inquiry on the way through which “Science” arises from the symbolic and virtual behaviour of that living organism called “man”. (shrink)

This volume of the collected writings of John Sallis presents a two-semester lecture course on Maurice Merleau-Ponty given at Duquesne University from 1970 to 1971. Devoted primarily to a close reading of the French philosopher's magnum opus, Phenomenology of Perception, the course begins with a detailed analysis of The Structure of Behavior. The central topics considered in the lectures include the functions of the phenomenological body; beyond realism and idealism; the structures of the lived world; spatiality, temporality, (...) language, sexuality; and perception and knowledge. Sallis illuminates Merleau-Ponty's first two works and offers a thread to follow through developments in his later essays. Merleau-Ponty's notion of the primacy of perception and his claim that "the end of a philosophy is the account of its beginning" are woven throughout the lectures. For Sallis's part, these lectures are foundational for his extended engagement with Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, which was published in Sallis's Phenomenology and the Return to Beginnings. (shrink)

Le rapport à l’altérité en général et à autrui en particulier condense un noyau de possibilités multiples qui, selon l’hypothèse esquissée, s’exprime et s’interprète dans le mode de penser et de vivre le Désir d’avenir. Oscillant entre hétérophagie et hétérophilie, ce type fondamental d’érotisme temporel s’incarne dans des configurations phénoménologiques dont la typologie idéale fait covarier une décision métaphysique (repérable au sein du spectre qui va de l’idéalisme constructiviste au réalisme affectif) avec une attitude éthique (située entre le scepticisme individualiste (...) et l’hétérodicée absolue). L’analyse des contrastes qui définissent les positions onto-éthiques de Sartre, Merleau-Ponty et Levinas devient une méthode heuristique pour mettre en évidence la topologie de l’incommensurable et de l’optatif. -/- The relation to alterity in general and to others in particular encapsulates a logical space of multiple possibilities which, according to the author’s hypothesis, may be expressed and interpreted in the manner of thinking and living the Desire of future. Oscillating between heterophagia and heterophilia, this fundamental type of temporal eroticism embodies various phenomenological configurations whose ideal typology reveals a deep correlation between a metaphysical decision (oriented towards either constructivist idealism or affective realism) with an ethical attitude (ranging from individualistic scepticism to absolute heterodicy). The analysis of mutual contrasts defining Sartre’s, Merleau-Ponty’s and Levinas’ onto-ethic stances is adopted as a methodological device in order to elucidate a broad topology of incommensurabilia and desiderata. (shrink)

Being and Negativity. The Thinking of the Subjective-Objective in Merleau-Ponty and GrimaldiThe thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is distinguished at the outset from that of Nicolas Grimaldi as much by their methodological commitments as by the place each one accords to time. Nevertheless, their adoption of a double point of view on the human being – as at the same time consciousness and object – justifies bringing them together. Confronted to its full extent, the problem of the (...) subjective-objective implies the development of a monistic ontology and authorizes the critique that Merleau-Ponty and Grimaldi both address to Sartre and Bergson. In thinking a negativity internal to Being, the two authors come to restore an authentic passivity of mind, inaccessible to the dialectic of being and nothingness. Their philosophical paths diverge conclusively in the solution each brings to this common problem : whereas Merleau-Ponty only sees an apparent contradiction in the duality of points of view, one that is to be lifted by reworking them, Grimaldi’s realism maintains the contradiction at the heart of a substantial unity conceived as time.Essere e negatività. Il pensiero del soggettivo-oggettivo in Merleau-Ponty e GrimaldiIl pensiero di Maurice Merleau-Ponty e di Nicolas Grimaldi si distinguono, ad un primo sguardo, sia per la loro presa di posizione metodologica che per il ruolo che rispettivamente accordano al tempo. Ciononostante, la loro presa in considerazione di un doppio punto di vista sull’uomo – compreso alo stesso tempo come coscienza e come oggetto – giustifica un loro confronto. Affrontato in tutta la sua ampiezza, il problema del soggettivo-oggettivo implica lo sviluppo di un’ontologia monista ed autorizza le critiche che Merleau-Ponty e Grimaldi rivolgono entrambi a Sartre e Bergson. Pensando ad una negatività interna all’Essere, i due autori giungono a restaurare una passività autentica dello spirito, inaccessibile alla dialettica tra essere e niente. In definitiva, le due vie filosofiche considerate in questo saggio divergono rispetto alla soluzione che essi forniscono a questo problema comune : mentre Merleau-Ponty vede nella dualità dei punti di vista una mera contraddizione apparente che si tratta di eliminare riformulandoli, il realismo grimaldiano mantiene la contraddizione inseno ad un’unità sostanziale concepita in termini di tempo. (shrink)

First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental _Phénoménologie de la perception _signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers. _Phenomenology of Perception _stands in the great phenomenological tradition (...) of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course between the reductionism of science on the one hand and "intellectualism" on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures one’s situation and experience within the world. Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome, synaesthesia, and hallucination. This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations. Also included is a new foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to Merleau-Ponty_ _by Claude Lefort. Translated by Donald A. Landes. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty was a pivotal figure in twentieth century French philosophy. He was responsible for bringing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers, Husserl and Heidegger, to France and instigated a new wave of interest in this approach. His influence extended well beyond the boundaries of philosophy and can be seen in theories of politics, art and language. This is the first volume to bring together a comprehensive selection of Merleau-Ponty's writing and presents a cross-section of his (...) work which shows the historical progression of his ideas and influence. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the _body_ to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. (...) Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others.

Dans Folioplus philosophie, le texte philosophique, associé une oeuvre d'art qui l'éclaire et le questionne, est suivi d'un dossier organisé en six points :Les mots du texte : Corps, entrelacs (chiasme), chair ; L'œuvre dans l'histoire des idées ; La figure du philosophe ; Trois questions posées au texte : Y a-t-il une chair de l'image? L'accès à l'être implique-t-il la neutralisation du sensible? Y a-t-il une chair de l'histoire? ; Groupement de textes : L'écriture et l'image: l'existence, la mort (...) ; Prolongements. (shrink)

This book contains the unfinished manuscript and working notes of the book Merleau-Ponty was writing when he died.

This chapter contains section titled: “The Spatiality of One's Own Body and Motility”.

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

Edition de 150 pages manuscrites laissées par Merleau-Ponty à sa mort et devant constituer les premiers chapitres d'un grand ouvrage intitulé "Le visible et l'invisible". Elles devaient introduire à un nouveau départ pour la pensée philosophique, les concepts fondamentaux de la philosophie moderne étant considérés comme des postulats résultant eux-mêmes déjà d'une interprétation singulière du monde. Le dernier tiers du volume rassemble des notes de travail, éparses, rédigées en vue de l'oeuvre, et qui peuvent en éclairer le sens. (...) Une substantielle postface de Claude Lefort cherche à dégager le sens qu'aurait eu "Le visible et l'invisible" dans le parcours, interrompu. (shrink)