The purpose of this article is to find out the possibility of overcoming the problem of modern philosophy which is represented by the identity philosophy by the problem of 'difference' in Merleau - Ponty 's ‘Body - Flesh Ontology’. In particular, we will note that although Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is still phenomenology, it is distinguished from Husserl's phenomenology and very important. So Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology is the phenomenology of phenomenology and the ‘Body-Flesh Ontology’. Therefore, the problem of 'subject' (...) arises here. Merleau-Ponty finds subjectivity in the body rather than in reason. A body must have individuality, and subjectivity can also be established. The subject can not deny the relationship because it is the subject. The body has identity as a body - subject and communicates with the world. The world is a co-world of body-subjects. Merleau-Ponty therefore explains ontologically the flesh as an ontological foundation upon which body-subjects can have individuality. Flesh is the source of life and fundamental chapter. It is because these bodies are the world bodies that each body can directly contact. Therefore, each body is explained as ‘intercorporéité’, and eventually ‘intercorporéité’ will be confirmed as the foundation of ‘intersubjectivité’. This study suggests that Merleau - Ponty 's body phenomenology and flesh ontology are on a continuous line, and that Merleau - Ponty' s philosophy is ‘Body - Flesh Ontology’. (shrink)

이 글은 세계 속 신체-주체와 지각 대상의 접속에 의한 지각 현상의 특성을 밝히고, 이를 바탕으로 영화 속 영화이미지의 현상학적 특성과 현상학적인 존재론적 살로서의 영화 이미지의 특성 및 영화이미지의 존재 의미를 밝히는 것을 목적으로 한다. 이런 밝힘으로 말미암아 현상학적인 존재론적 살로서의 영화이미지의 가치가 드러날 것이다. 현상학적 지각 현상은 차이장 속 차이의 지각 현상이 되고 차이 존재를 토대로 지각 현 상 자체를 나타내는 차이존재론적 지각 현상이 된다. 지각 현상은 운동적인 지각지평-차 이장 속 역동적인 차이들이 시공적으로 생산되고 있는 총체적 시스템의 지각 현상이다. 시간적 (...) 게슈탈트로서의 영화란 단순히 이미지들을 모아놓은 집합이 아니라, 이다. 영화이미지는 가상이면서도 현실이고 현실이면서도 가상이 되고 있으며, 차이장 속 가상과 현실을 맞물리게 하는 맞물림의 시뮬라크르 가 되고 있다. 영화이미지들의 관계적인 접속적 상황에서 영화적 현재는 영화적 과거와 영화적 미래 에 대한 시간적 살을 가진다. 영화이미지들은 서로에 대한 대립과 대립적 살을 가지고, 갈등, 권력, 사랑의 관계적인 영화이미지들은 각각 서로에 대하여 갈등과 갈등적 살, 권력과 권력적 살, 사랑과 사랑의 살을 가진다. 영화이미지들의 교차는 살적인 새로운 생성 의미 와 그 영화이미지들의 존재 의미를 드러내고, 관객은 영화이미지들의 살을 통해서 영화이 미지의 의미와 존재 의미 및 자신의 존재 의미를 느끼고 의식한다. 영화 속 영화이미지들은 항상 컨텍스트-영화이미지들로서 작동한다. (shrink)

메를로-퐁티의 철학은 그의 철학적 기술들(descriptions)에서 발견되는 미학적 관점, 언어적 관점, 정치적 관점 등의 세부 논의를 제외하면 크게 신체의 현상학적 관점과 살의 존재론적 관점으로 구분할 수 있다. 그런데 그것이 무엇이건 특정한 철학이 취하는 인식론적, 존재론적 틀 속에는 그러한 틀에 부합하는 윤리적 해석이 또한 내재할 수밖에 없으며, 이는 메를로-퐁티의 철학도 마찬가지이다. 따라서 비록 그가 윤리학을 구체적으로 이야기하고 있지 않다고 하더라도 메를로-퐁티의 철학을 윤리학적 관점으로 해석하고, 그의 철학을 윤리학의 범위로 확장하고자 하는 노력들이 그의 철학이 갖는 현상학적 특징과 존재론적 특징에 의해 폄하될 필요는 없을 (...) 것이다.BR 본 텍스트는 아직은 메를로-퐁티 철학에 대한 주요 논의로 인정되고 있지 않은 지각과 살 철학에 대한 윤리학적 해석 가능성을 넓히기 위해 다음과 같은 문제의식으로부터 출발한다. 그 문제의식이란 메를로-퐁티 철학에 대한 동시대의 윤리학적 해석 방향은 그 본래의 취지와는 달리 그의 철학을 일방향적으로 해석하는 흐름을 띤다는 것이며 이는 첫째, 상호신체성에 치중한 신체 윤리학의 구도 잡기와 둘째, 존재의 원소로 해석되는 살에 대한 이해에 공통적으로 자리한 하나의 역설, 즉 가역적 과정에 요구되는 상관항들의 필요를 배제한 체 살 일원론적 상황만을 강조할 수밖에 없는 신체-살에 대한 일반적 해석에 기인하는 것으로 보인다.BR 본 논문은 이러한 문제점을 구체화하고, 메를로-퐁티 윤리학이란 그의 존재론에 담긴 가역성을 그 원리로 가질 때 닫힌 체계가 아닌 열린 해석의 체계로 이루어져야 하며 이를 위해서는 신체와 살 각각의 개념에 상이한 해석의 가능성이 담겨야 한다는 점을 주장한다. (shrink)

이 글은 4차 산업혁명의 이미지 시대에서 메를로-퐁티의 살-존재론적 입장에서 세계 속 ‘신체 주체의 살’과 ‘세계의 살’ 및 이미지의 본질적 특성을 밝히고, 그의 살-존재론을 토대로 4차 산업혁명 사회 속 이미지의 성질과 중요성을 고찰하며, 회화이미지·사진이미지·영화이미지의 특성과 가치 및 효용성을 밝히는 것을 목적으로 한다. 이런 밝힘으로 4차 산업혁명 사회에서 사람 존재의 참된 의미와 우리의 미래지향적 길을 드러낼 것이다. 신체 주체와 세계의 교차에서, 신체 주체는 세계에 대한 살을 가지고, 동시에 세계는 신체 주체에 대한 살을 가진다. 가역성과 가시성으로서의 살, 즉 교차적 살은 모든 존재자의 특성과 (...) 존재를 밝힌다. 이것은 신체 주체의 이미지와 대상의 이미지의 관계적 특성을 드러낸다. 4차 산업혁명 시대에 살-존재론적 살을 토대로 사물인터넷, 3D 프린팅, 로봇, 합성생물학의 사회의 특성을 고찰하면서 디지털 이미지의 가치와 효용성을 밝히며, 더불어 회화, 사진, 영화의 세계에서 회화이미지, 사진이미지, 영화이미지의 특성을 고찰하면서 예술적 이미지의 가치와 변용성을 밝힌다. 궁극적으로 모든 존재자의 이미지와 산업 혁명적 기술 및 사람의 존재에 대한 바른 이해를 통해 4차 산업혁명 시대에 경제적 부 이미지, 자유이미지, 평등이미지, 건강이미지, 행복이미지 등에 대해 항상 마음씀-이미지를 다해야 할 것이다. (shrink)

이 글은 강렬한 인상과 사유를 통해 대립적 색채-형상의 예술미를 표현하였던 고흐의 예술 세계에 내포되어 있는 해체주의적 특성과 살-존재론적 특성을 밝히고, 이를 토대로 새로운 창의적 예술 세계가 펼쳐질 수 있는 미래지향적 예술의 한 양상을 제시하는 미래지향적 예술미로서의 통섭미를 밝히는 것을 목적으로 한다. 해체란 파괴임과 동시에 구성이다. 고흐의 예술 세계가 내포하고 있는 해체주의적 특성은 인상적인 보색 대비의 양상에서 잘 드러난다. 회화에서 색채와 형상의 차연적인 흔적을 통해서 아름다운 것들은 드러난다. 색채와 형상을 통한 아름다움은 바로 아름다운 것들의 흔적에 의한 것이다. 그것들은 차이의 시간·공간적 네트워크로서의 (...) 흔적이다. 모든 시각적 흔적들은 차이 혹은 차연의 기호들이다. ‘자연의 사물이나 생명체’는 ‘예술적 색채’에 대한 색채의 살이 되고 동시에 ‘예술적 색채’는 ‘자연의 사물이나 생명체’에 대한 살이 된다. 이런 살은 교차와 얽힘으로서의 살이다. 색깔이 형상적 대상에 무한히 비결정성의 열기를 부여하기 때문에, 색깔은 색의 차이들과 더불어 깊이를 구성하는 것이다. 색깔은 우선 변화의 다른 차원, 즉 주변과 관계하는 차원에서 변화한다. 이런 가운데 살-존재론적인 예술적 살은 존재의 열개가 된다. 차이장으로서의 예술적 텍스트는 흔적의 차이와 잠재적인 가능적 차이 및 존재론적 살적 작용을 내포하고 있다. 이와 같은 텍스트의 특성을 토대로 차이장 속에서 항상 현재적 차이와 가능적 차이를 머금고 살아 움직이는 통섭미를 추구하는 것은 미래지향적인 예술미와 새로운 미학의 세계를 위한 길이 될 것이다. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to develop several ways Merleau-Ponty's ontology might contribute to an environmental ethic through a redefinition of his concept of flesh in terms of a general theory of affectivity. Currently accepted interpretations of the concept such as those in Abram, Toadvine, Barbaras, and Dastur rely upon conceiving flesh as a perceptual experience. I contest this interpretation and argue that a more productive conception of flesh emerges when understood in terms of Heidegger's philosophy. (...) The paper concludes with a consideration of the normative significance of flesh by examining the role of “wildness“ within a place-based ethic. (shrink)

This essay considers the two-way relation between critical realism and psychoanalysis. Critical realism vindicates and deepens our understanding of ontology by drawing on the sciences for which it...

The ontology developed by Merleau-Ponty in the final stage of his work is centered on the concept of flesh, giving this notion its most general scope by complementing the idea of “flesh of the body” with that of a “flesh of the world.” This paper seeks to evaluate the possibility of reading this philosophy of the flesh as a materialist ontology. For this purpose, the possibility is considered of interpreting the concept of flesh (...) as a new figure of matter, despite Merleau-Ponty’s claims that seem to preclude this interpretation. In concluding, the paper briefly discusses the potential contribution of this interpretation to approaching certain conceptual problems in contemporary science. It is argued that this approach can help to promote a more productive interchange between Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental thought and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Se examina la posición de M. Heidegger sobre el sentido ontológico de la corporalidad, como respuesta a la interpelación de aquello que se le presenta al Dasein debido a su constitución abierta al mundo. Esto lleva a preguntarse sobre la actuación corporal y técnica sobre el mundo, y sobre los otros, o al problema del cuerpo animal. Se confronta finalmente la perspectiva heideggeriana con la teoría del cuerpo subjetivo o trascendental de M. Henry, donde la apertura ontológica es reemplazada por (...) una fenomenología de la vida aplicada al cuerpo vivo como corporalidad encarnada. The article examines M. Heidegger's position regarding the ontological sense of corporality understood as an answer to the interpellation of that which presents itself to Dasein due to its constitution as being open to the world. This leads to questions regarding the corporal and technical action on the world and others, or the problem of the animal body. Finally, the article confronts Heidegger's perspective with M. Henry's theory of the subjective or transcendental body, in which the ontological openness is replaced by a phenomenology of life applied to the living body as an embodied corporality. (shrink)

In _Sentient Flesh _R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham’s 1937 remark “we should have our liberty 'cause... us is human flesh" as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as (...) music and dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-world—which he theorizes as “thinking in disorder,” or “poiēsis in black”—foreground the irreducible concomitance of flesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way past the destructive force of ontology that still holds us in thrall. Erudite and capacious, _Sentient Flesh _offers a major intervention in the black study of life. (shrink)

This article examines one of the main epistemological frameworks that feminist theory has used for the past 30 years: essentialism and anti-essentialism. It explores what is at stake by continuing to use such perspectives within the late days of the early 21st century, and how it is linked to a performance of critical sophistication which has specific political consequences. Instead of seeing the body as essentialist, the author draws on two examples — popular musician Kate Bush and ontological ideas about (...) the Goddess — to present the body as immanent flesh. This has implications for thinking through different forms of relational and critical perspectives circulating in the current climate, and the author argues that the recent introduction of affect and the increasing interest in haptic knowledges is part of the immanent flesh’s potential for transforming knowledge and the wider world. (shrink)

This paper attempts to draw out the political import of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh, by engaging the critique levelled against it by his student and literary executor Claude Lefort. In suggesting a tension in Merleau-Ponty’s work that obscures alterity, Lefort seems to miss the rich political import of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. Founded in his development of the concepts of écart and reversibility, Merleau-Ponty’s ontological position breaks with many of the standard tenets of political (...) thinking, and offers a multifaceted conception of alterity. I will suggest that Lefort’s own claim to alterity buckles under the immanent weight of his critique of Merleau-Ponty, offering at best a conception of otherness limited to a self-relational non-identity. This conception ultimately fails to adequately consider the relations existing between different beings-in-the-world. In thinking being as flesh, Merleau-Ponty offers us an ethico-political optic that attempts to think alterity and ontology in a manner that unhinges us from our closed and autonomous being, opening us to the world, others and to the non-identical becoming that characterizes being as such. (shrink)

Based on Merleau-Pontys’s philosophy of flesh, this paper outlines possibilities for organisational practices towards sustainability development. In order to elucidate these en-fleshed practices, the paper begins by presenting Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body and perception as well as his ontology of ‘flesh’. In particular, flesh is interpreted as elemental ‘carnality’ and formative medium. As such, it is processed through sensual and reflexive doubling as a reversibility and chiasm of the sentient and the sensible. This understanding opens (...) for the path to a post-dualistic, transformative approach towards processes of post-dualistic ‘wild being and ‘inter-be(com)ing’ in organisations. These concepts of Flesh are related to affect and imagination as well as organization and sustainability. The paper then offers some practical and political as well as research implications and concludes with some final perspectives on possible enfleshed inter-practices of sustainability. (shrink)

The Flesh of Images: Merleau-Ponty Between Painting and Cinema, by Mauro Carbone, is his third book in a body of work interpreting Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of Flesh: The Thinking of the Sensible: M...

The essay attempts to delineate how Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception can be applied to theories of sign processes, and how it reworks the framework of the phenomenalist conception of communication. His later philosophy involved a reformulation of subjectivity and a resolution of the subject/object dualism. My claim is that this non-reductionist theory of perception reveals a different view of nature as we experience it in an expressive and meaningful interaction. The perspective that another living being has and communicates entails (...) a form of depth, the invisible dimension of the visible or audible. These two aspects of perception and dialogue are intertwined in a dialectic of presence and absence, so that sense arises in the perceptual field rather than in subjectivity. This, I argue, is the most fundamental result of his theory. The origination of meaning in the workings of the chiasm of visible and invisible in perception opens up an objective sense of intersubjective nature. The essay also deals with the role of the phenomenological reduction; a suspension of beliefs and existence claims in experience. The reduction enables us to take a step back and look more closely at our understanding of nature in light of the historical and cultural influence on our thinking. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno’s 1960–1961 lecture course Ontology and Dialectics, recently translated into English, provides the most systematic articulation of his critique of Martin Heidegger. When Adorno delivered three of the lectures at the Collège de France, Maurice Merleau-Ponty was reportedly scandalised as he was at that time developing his own ontology, informed by Heidegger. However, this article problematises the assumption that Adorno’s negative dialectic and Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology are incompatible. First, Adorno’s criticism of Heidegger’s ontology is delineated, (...) with particular focus on how Adorno argues that Heidegger’s subordination of the human being to being is homologous with the logic of capitalism. Then, we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s own engagement with Heidegger, with particular focus on how Merleau-Ponty cannot be accused of denigrating ontic beings. Finally, it is argued that Merleau-Ponty’s indirect ontology has the same implications as those which allow Adorno to position his dialectical method as politically opposed to Heidegger’s ontology. (shrink)

This essay explores how Paul Ricoeur analyses the body as both flesh and text. Beginning with a phenomenology of embodiment and life in his early philosophy of the will, after his hermeneutic turn in the 1960s he concentrated more on the mediation of flesh through textual interpretation and language. This led Ricoeur beyond Husserl and Levinas and closer to the work of Merleau-Ponty. His later writing opens horizons for rethinking the ‘flesh of the world’ in new ontological (...) and ethical ways. (shrink)

The present paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s notion of Flesh/reversibility intellectually is significantly flawed, and leads phenomenology into something of a dead end. This is shown through the following strategy. First Merleau-Ponty’s account of originary perception and his critique of the reflective attitude are expounded. They are shown to culminate in rejection of the subject-object relation as an ontological fundamental in favour of a ‘hyper-reflective method’. A critique of Merleau-Ponty’s position is then offered. It argues that originary perception is not (...) logically prior to reflective thought, and that Merleau-Ponty fails to do justice to the scope of the subject-object relation. Specifically, he overlooks the way in which the relation is the basis of our practical perceptual orientation. It is then shown how this relation actually pervades Merleau-Ponty’s own all-important ‘hyper-reflective’ alternative – the notion of ‘Flesh’. Possible counter-arguments are considered and refuted. The.. (shrink)

Parallel lives is an ontological model of nature in which quantum mechanics and special relativity are unified in a single universe with a single space-time. Point-like objects called lives are the only fundamental objects in this space-time, and they propagate at or below c, and interact with one another only locally at point-like events in space-time, very much like classical point particles. Lives are not alive in any sense, nor do they possess consciousness or any agency to make decisions—they are (...) simply point objects which encode memory at events in space-time. The only causes and effects in the universe occur when lives meet locally, and thus the causal structure of interaction events in space-time is Lorentz invariant. Each life traces a continuous world-line through space-time, and experiences its own relative world, fully defined by the outcomes of past events along its world-line, which are encoded in its external memory. A quantum field comprises a continuum of lives throughout space-time, and familiar physical systems like particles each comprise a sub-continuum of the lives of the field. Each life carries a hidden internal memory containing a local relative wavefunction, which is a local piece of a pure universal wavefunction, but it is the relative wavefunctions in the local memories throughout space-time which are physically real in PL, and not the universal wavefunction in configuration space. Furthermore, while the universal wavefunction tracks the average behavior of the lives of a system, it fails to track their individual dynamics and trajectories. There is always a preferred separable basis, and for an irreducible physical system, each orthogonal term in this basis is a different relative world—each containing some fraction of the lives of the system. The relative wavefunctions in the lives’ internal memories govern which lives of different systems can meet during future local interactions, and thereby enforce entanglement correlations—including Bell inequality violations. These, and many other details, are explored here, but several aspects of this framework are not yet fleshed out, and work is ongoing. (shrink)

The article aims at elaborating a non-speculative concept of social pathology. In the first section, various conceptualizations (e.g. Habermas, Honneth) are critically revaluated. It is argued that (a) applying the originally medical concept of ‘pathology’ on social entities has untenable connotations (due to the lacking social equivalent of death); (b) grounding social pathology on the level of ‘social suffering’ is not in accordance with the actors’ horizon shaped by biomedical- and psy-discourses. To avoid these dead-ends, social pathologies are reinterpreted as (...) structural distortions causing diseases or mental disorders. To refine this initial definition, in the second section, Merleau-Ponty’s concept of chiasm is used as an ontological framework translating between medical and social diagnoses. The proposed concept of social pathology refers to those patterns of disrupted pre-intentional, intentional and mediated intertwining, which manifest as ill or psychopathological chiasm. In the third section, two case studies are elaborated: the intersubjective structures of depressed and asthmatic chiasm. Finally, the implications for critical theory and praxis are overviewed. (shrink)

This article explores the cannibalistic dimensions of racial disgust and desire in Michel Houellebecq’s Submission. Situated within broader discourses of French déclinisme, Submis- sion offers a melancholic portrait of white nostalgia. Through the tastes and consumptive practices of his characters, Houellebecq depicts white identification as dependent on an ambivalent relationship to corporeal difference. Paying close attention to the mouth’s dual function as a site of ontological triage (sorting out the human from the non-human, the edible from the inedible) and ontological (...) transformation (converting dead matter into living flesh), I argue that cannibalist desire is integral to white nationalist anxiety. (shrink)

Flesh of My Flesh is a collection of articles by today's most respected scientists, philosophers, bioethicists, theologians, and law professors about whether we should allow human cloning. It includes historical pieces to provide background for the current debate. Religious, philosophical, and legal points of view are all represented.

Because of risks of essentialism and homogenization, feminist theorists frequently avoid making precise ontological claims, especially in regard to specifying bodily connections and differences among women. However well-intentioned, this trend may actually run counter to the spirit of intersectionality by shifting feminists' attention away from embodiment, fostering oppressor-centric theories, and obscuring privilege within feminism. What feminism needs is not to turn from ontological specificity altogether, but to engage a new kind of ontological project that can account for the material complexity (...) of social space in the twenty-first century. Taking inspiration from the phenomenological concept of flesh as well as ecofeminism and María Lugones's theory of the colonial/modern gender system, this essay argues that our own flesh is related to that of others through lines of intercorporeal relations that collectively form topographies of flesh. When we attend to those material relationships present in a particular locality at a point in time, we are able to recognize topographical aggregates of beings that can serve as a basis for this new feminist ontology. An example from Toni Morrison's Beloved involving a human woman and a nonhuman one is used as a paradigm for thinking ontological connection and difference at the same time. (shrink)

This essay compares Maurice Merleau-Ponty's notion of the flesh with Judith Butler's concept of primary vulnerability in terms of their helpfulness for developing an intersubjective ontology. It compares the flesh with Butler's more recent concept of primary vulnerability insofar as she sees both as useful for intersubjective ontology. The hiatus of the flesh is that which spans between self and world and opens Merleau-Ponty's thought onto an intersubjective ontology. While Butler's discussion of vulnerability as (...) a primary condition of human existence also makes this concept intersubjective, her understanding of violence as articulated through vulnerability makes this a more helpful concept for intersubjective ontology than the flesh. While many discussions of an intersubjective way of life focus almost exclusively on its positive possibilities, almost to the exclusion of violence altogether, the understanding of violence Butler presents through primary vulnerability helps us to discern whether a violation is benign or malign. In turn, this fuller understanding of violence lets primary vulnerability open onto an ethical imperative of reconciliation, but a reconciliation of what is never whole. (shrink)

Julian of Norwich (b. 1342) anticipated the ontological and epistemological work on sexed embodiment pioneered in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the 20th century. Her epistemology of sensual ‘showings’ helped reconfigure women’s embodiment and speech acts (‘bodytalk’): by recognizing cognitive emotions and the knowledge-producing body; and by envisioning the intertwining of human flesh with All That Is. The paper next examines Merleau-Ponty’s somatic discourse on the chiasmic flesh, which leads to a discussion of Irigaray’s work on (...) poetic mimesis. (shrink)

This paper aims to find, in Merleau-Ponty’s late thinking, a definition of the virtual which aligns with the latest advancements in digital technology while avoiding a reduction to the digital realm or a stark opposition to reality. The virtual is considered as a crucial characteristic in Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology, especially in The Visible and the Invisible, where a “virtual focus” or “virtual center” of the flesh is introduced. The argument posits that Merleau-Ponty’s monism of the flesh results (...) in a dynamic view of virtuality, with significant ontological implications that reshape the relationship between the digital and the analogue. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the virtual is defined by several key features: it applies to a monist perspective on reality, to a dynamic relationality between dialectic poles, and to the fabric of reality. This interpretation of the virtual implies a divergence from the digital, as virtuality belongs to the whole spectrum of reality. (shrink)

This essay is a second attempt to reconcile the perspectives of Merleau-Ponty and Guattari, following on the examination of the unconscious in a previous issue of Chiasmi. Here the focus concerns an ontology that overcomes the dualistic heritage of Western metaphysics. More precisely, I compare the concept of flesh as Merleau-Ponty employs it in his later texts with that of the machine as Guattari uses this from the end of the 1960s until his last writings in the early (...) 1990s. The machine concerns the potential for transformation in a given social and political configuration, so that the ontology to be drawn from this concept is a thought of transformation. The position of individual subjectivity in this context is not so different from that granted to it by Merleau-Ponty in his last writings: a curvature of the flesh or, as Deleuze and Guattari write about the artisan in A Thousand Plateaus, “one who is determined in such a way as to follow a flow of matter.”Cet essai est une deuxième tentative de rapprochement des perspectives de Merleau-Ponty et de Guattari, après la problématique de l’inconscient traitée dans un précédent numéro de Chiasmi. Cette fois elle a lieu sous l’angle d’une ontologie qui surmonte l’héritage dualiste de la métaphysique occidentale. Plus précisément, je mets en comparaison la notion de chair telle que Merleau-Ponty la met en oeuvre dans ses textes tardifs et celle de machine telle que Guattari l’emploie depuis la fin des années 1960 jusqu’à ses derniers écrits du début des années 1990. La machine concerne le potentiel de transformation dans une configuration sociale et politique donnée, de sorte que l’ontologie qu’on peut tirer de cette notion est une pensée de la transformation. La position de la subjectivité individuelle dans ce contexte n’est pas très différente de celle que lui accorde Merleau-Ponty dans ses derniers écrits : une courbure de la chair, ou comme l’écrivent Deleuze et Guattari dans Mille plateaux à propos de l’artisan, « celui qui est déterminé à suivre un flux de matière ».Questo saggio è un secondo tentativo di avvicinare le prospettive di Merleau-Ponty e di Guattari, dopo quanto fatto in un precedente numero di Chiasmi attorno alla problematica dell’inconscio. Questa volta, tale raffronto sarà nella prospettiva di un’ontologia che superi l’eredità dualistica della metafisica occidentale. Più precisamente, intendo confrontare la nozione di carne, nel modo in cui essa prende corpo nei testi dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty, e quella di macchina di Guattari, nella maniera in cui è caratterizzata dall’autore a partire dalla fine degli anni Sessanta fino ai suoi ultimi scritti dell’inizio degli anni Novanta. La macchina riguarda il potenziale di trasformazione in una configurazione sociale e politica data, e quindi l’ontologia che ne deriva implica un pensiero della trasformazione. In questo contesto, la posizione della soggettività individuale non è molto diversa da quella caratterizzata da Merleau-Ponty nei suoi ultimi scritti: una curvatura della carne, o, come scrivono Deleuze e Guattari in Millepiani a proposito dell’artigiano, “colui che è determinato a seguire un flusso di materia”. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that “I am always on the same side of my body” if the body is understood as flesh? This question of sidedness, and specifically of perspectival unilaterality, in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology leads to a careful sorting of the various relational metaphors that he deploys across his oeuvre, including reversibility, intertwining, possession, encroachment, incorporation, promiscuity, and many others. Curiously, each of these notions implicates a different image of sidedness, from sides that are impermeable in (...) themselves but nonetheless interwoven with those of other bodies, to sides that are porous, interpenetrated, incorporable, and yielding. Ultimately, it is suggested with reference to Merleau-Ponty’s ontologically anticipatory concept of le schèma corporel that unilaterality is not a necessary feature of incarnate subjectivity after all, but is instead one of the last specters of modern metaphysics, haunting Merleau-Ponty’s thinking still. Insofar as perspectival individuation is a function of the dynamic operations of actual body schemas rather than a logical, topological, or ontological given, subjectivity will be essentially promiscuous rather than merely reversible, moving in and out of bodies, overflowing its own body, taking in the bodies of others, leaking into and absorbing the flesh of the world, at times to the point of indivision.Quel est le sens de cet énoncé : « Je suis toujours du même côté de mon corps » lorsque le corps est compris comme chair? Cette question de l’unilatéralité, en particulier celle de l’unilatéralité perspectivale, dans l’ontologie de Merleau-Ponty, conduit à une utilisation précise d’un ensemble de métaphores variées qu’il déploie dans son oeuvre, telles que la réversibilité, l’entrelacement, la possession, l’empiètement, l’incorporation, la promiscuité et bien d’autres encore. Curieusement, chaque notion implique une image d’unilatéralité différente, depuis les côtés qui sont imperméables en eux-mêmes mais néanmoins entrelacés avec ceux des autres corps, jusqu’aux côtés qui sont poreux, interpénétrés, incorporables, malléables. En définitive, il semble que la référence anticipée au concept de schéma corporel montre que l’unilatéralité n’est pas, après tout, un élément nécessaire de la subjectivité incarnée, mais plutôt un des derniers spectres de la métaphysique moderne qui hante le style de la pensée de Merleau-Ponty. Dans la mesure où l’individuation perspectivale est une fonction des opérations dynamiques des schémas corporels actuels et non un donné logique, topologique ou ontologique, la subjectivité sera essentiellement promiscuité plutôt que simplement réversible, entrant et sortant des corps, débordant son propre corps, prenant le corps des autres, laissant filtrer la chair du monde et l’absorbant, parfois jusqu’au point de l’indivision.Che cosa significa dire che “io mi trovo sempre dallo stesso lato del mio corpo” se il corpo è compreso come carne? Questa questione della lateralità e in particolare di una unilateralità nell’ontologia di Merleau-Ponty ci porta a discernere attentamente le diverse metafore relazionali che il filosofo impiega nel corso della sua opera, tra cui reversibilità, intreccio, sconfinamento, incorporazione, promiscuità, per citarne solo alcune. È interessante notare che ciascuna di queste nozioni implica una differente immagine della lateralità, da lati che sono impermeabili in se stessi e ciononostante intrecciati con quelli di altri corpi, fino a lati che sono invece porosi, interpenetrati gli uni con gli altri, incorporabili e cedevoli. In definitiva, la nozione merleau-pontiana – ontologicamente anticipatrice – di schema corporeo suggerisce che l’unilateralità non è un carattere necessario della soggettività incarnata, ma invece uno degli spettri residuali della metafisica moderna, che ancora incombono sul pensiero di Merleau-Ponty. Nella misura in cui l’individuazione prospettica è una funzione delle operazioni dinamiche di schemi corporei piuttosto che un dato logico, topologico o ontologico, la soggettività sarà essenzialmente promiscua e non semplicemente reversibile, muovendo verso l’interno e l’esterno dei corpi, sconfinando i limiti del corpo, lasciando entrare i corpi altrui, concedendo l’ingresso e assorbendo la carne del mondo, talvolta fino a raggiungere l’indiscernibilità. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to discuss an essay written by the French psychoanalyst André Green on occasion of the publication in 1964 of The Visible and the Invisible, in order to frame it within the context of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for the sake of letting emerge both the critical importance and some structural issues implied in Green’s reading.Green’s study clearly points out that the question concerning Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “flesh” represents a fundamental theme for psychoanalysis, in connection with Lacan’s (...) interpretation of the unconscious as “structured as a language.” As Green would more widely stress in further works, he disagrees with Lacan and follows Merleau-Ponty on this point.At the same time, Green remarks that in Merleau-Ponty’s perspective there still remain two unsolved issues: his conceiving of the unconscious basically as “other side” and not, like in Freud, in terms of “other scene;” and the question concerning affects, seen as not sufficiently worked out within Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective. Yet, even if it is possible to accept some of the critical remarks made by Green, it is nevertheless also necessary to reformulate them within a wider and deeper reading of the ontology of the flesh.Le but de cet article est de discuter un essai écrit par le psychanalyste André Green à l’occasion de la publication en 1964 du Visible et l’Invisible, afin de le questionner dans le contexte de la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty et de laisser émerger à la fois l’importance critique et quelque problèmes implicites de la lecture de Green.L’étude de Green montre clairement que la question concernant la notion merleau-pontienne de « chair » représente un thème fondamental pour la psychanalyse, en rapport avec l’interprétation lacanienne de l’inconscient, selon lui, « structuré comme un langage ». Dans ses travaux suivants, Green insistera sur son désaccord avec Lacan et suivra Merleau-Ponty sur ce point. Au même moment, Green remarque que dans la perspective merleau-pontienne, il demeure deux problèmes non résolus : sa conception de l’inconscient en termes d’« autre côté » et non, comme chez Freud, d’« autre scène » ; et la question concernant les affects, qui n’est pas suffisamment travaillée au sein de la perspective phénoménologique de Merleau-Ponty. Cependant, bien qu’il soit possible d’accepter certaines remarques critiques de Green, il est néanmoins nécessaire de les reformuler au sein d’une lecture plus vaste et plus profonde de l’ontologie de la chair. In questo saggio ci si propone di discutere un saggio dello psicoanalista André Green, scritto in occasione della pubblicazione di Il visibile e l’invisibile in Francia nel 1964, e contenente alcune notazioni molto importanti per comprendere un determinato modo di ricezione dell’ontologia fenomenologica di Merleau-Ponty da parte di uno psicoanalista originale e competente sia in materia di fenomenologia sia di psicoanalisi.Lo studio di Green mostra un significato particolare sia in quanto segnala molto per tempo l’importanza dell’opera di Merleau-Ponty per la psicoanalisi, sia perché indica chiaramente alcuni snodi problematici che in seguito sarebbero stati spesso rielaborati da parte di lettori dell’opera di Merleau-Ponty appartenenti al movimento psicoanalitico. In questo saggio ci si propone dunque di esaminare le notazioni di Green e di metterle nel contesto del pensiero di Merleau-Ponty al fine di farne emergere sia l’importanza critica sia però anche alcuni problemi di fondo.Lo studio di Green indica con chiarezza come la questione della carne costituisca un tema fondamentale anche per la ricerca psicoanalitica, in particolare in relazione all’interpretazione data da Lacan al concetto di inconscio “strutturato come un linguaggio”. Come avrebbe in seguito più ampiamente mostrato, Green non è d’accordo con Lacan e in questo segue alcune indicazioni di Merleau-Ponty. Al contempo, non manca di far notare due problematiche irrisolte nell’ottica di Merleau-Ponty: il concepire fondamentalmente l’inconscio come “altro lato” e non, come in Freud, in termini di “altra scena”; in secondo luogo il problema dell’affetto, come tema irrisolto all’interno della prospettiva fenomenologica di Merleau-Ponty.Seguendo lo snodo di questo studio è possibile così far emergere con chiarezza il significato innovativo del concetto merleau-pontyano di carne, anche al di là dell’interpretazione di Green, quale possibile sfondo ontologico di una indagine categoriale sui concetti portanti della psicoanalisi. In definitiva se è lecito recepire alcune delle critiche mosse da Green a Merleau-Ponty, è però anche necessario riformularle all’interno di una più approfondita lettura dell’ontologia della carne. (shrink)

The debate between instrumentalist and technological determinist positions on the nature of technology characterised the early history of the philosophy of technology. In recent years however technological determinism has ceased to be viewed as a credible philosophical position within the field. This paper uses Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to reconsider the technological determinist outlook in phenomenological terms as an experiential response to the encounter with the phenomenon of modern technology. Recasting the instrumentalist-determinist debate in a phenomenological manner enables one to reconcile the (...) apparent dualism of the instrumentalist and determinist positions through Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. This ontology has recently been used to ground accounts of virtual embodiment. We argue that in addition to explaining away the classical form of technological determinism, it can also phenomenologically ground a novel understanding of technological determinism. Namely, a technological determinism of virtual embodiment. (shrink)

This article reads Maurice Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the “flesh of the world” alongside the ontology that seems to undergird Frantz Fanon's sociodiagnostics as well as his theory of sociogeny. It argues that reading Fanonian sociogeny in terms of the ambiguity and intercorporeality of the flesh of the world renders the ethical and political imperatives of Fanon's decolonial project all the more pressing, since the “new human” is prefigured—if not totally determined—in the national consciousness obtained by “les (...) damnés” through the decolonization process. It then examines how Sylvia Wynter's Fanonian call to (re)fashion the future of humanness through (re)conceptualizing “being human as praxis,” also seems to rely on this ontology of the flesh of the world. Bringing these arguments together, the article suggests that the conceptual content of the new human can be found in the liberation struggles of les damnés across what Wynter calls the “poverty archipelagos” wrought by colonial humanism. Hence, the “new skin” for which Fanon calls is fashioned through forming international solidarity with les damnés, with the conceptual content of the new humanism emerging sociogenically—and autopoetically—from those struggles themselves. (shrink)

In this paper I address the question of what it is to be alienated from nature. The focus is alienation in the sense of estrangement, a ‘being cut off from’ a wider world. That we are so estranged is a claim associated with ecological critique of contemporary society. But what is it to be estranged from nature given that everything we are, do and produce, always remains within a wider nature? I explore the possibility that this might be understood with (...) reference to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘flesh’. I set the scene for this with some discussion of Honneth’s recent account of reification as a ‘distorted praxis’ and then, drawing upon Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and especially his later ontology of flesh, develop the idea of estrangement from the natural world as an inadequate participation in a ‘primordial’ perceptual relation. This idea of estrangement brings together various elements of ecological critique. However, I argue that although this idea of estrangement might inform and help to articulate such a critique, it cannot be the sole concern of an environmental political philosophy: other kinds of alienation within the humanised environmental context need to be considered too. (shrink)

Actionism, Performance and Body Art have produced forms that still provoke in their radicalism and brutality and raise many questions. Regardless of the theme—love, violence, gender, death, sexuality, killing of animals, ritual practices and myths, ecology, criticism of the ideology and so on—they are almost always characterized by an explicit and demonstrative exposure of flesh. The topic of my research is the body as a medium of the human act. Does the body elicit different “corporations of the mind” or (...) does it draw attention to its own complex naked presence and extensionality in every elementary social interaction? Is the body unquantifiable—imponderabilia, unpredictable, and is it spinning out of the generated statistics of the system research? (shrink)

The paper discusses a posthuman reading of Merleau-Ponty’s later works and an application of the concept of flesh to the digital dimension. Whereas, in the Phenomenology of Perception, the world and other beings are seen from an egological and human perspective, in The Visible and the Invisible this perspective is reshaped. Human body is made of the same stuff of other bodies, and they constitute a common being, the flesh of the world. Merleau-Ponty sets out a path through (...) flat ontology and posthumanism, opposing human perspective as a privileged one. His posthuman turn passes through the concepts of reversibility and divergence. Humans are made of the same stuff as non-humans, so they reverse into one another, but, on the other hand, they are not reduced to an undifferentiated entity, because of their divergence. Merleau-Ponty’s problematizing perspective is here actualized and applied to the hybridization between human bodies and digital protheses. (shrink)

Infants who suffer severe neglect fail to thrive emotionally as well as bodily. The absence of early coexistential structures that provide well-being leads to a narrowing of the child's perceptual and social developmental horizon. What is the nature of these early structures? In this essay, an ontology of well-being or housedness is elaborated through phenomenological reflections on breast-feeding and infant perception. Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the flesh makes a contribution to the ontology of well-being: it gives us (...) a conceptual and evocative language to describe human existence in its pre-verbal, syncretic, and non-dualistic manifestations. It also allows for a re-evaluation and re-interpretation of the results of current research in infant perception. Through the structures of infant perception we perceive the coexistential fit between infants, other human beings, and the world of things. An infant's fundamental housedness in the flesh is taken up and cultivated or destroyed by the child's social and cultural environment. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur’s recourse to the metahistorical categories, space of experience and horizon of expectation, invites an inquiry into geography’s role as the guarantor of history. The ontology of the flesh provides the first indication of how one’s body is implicated in the sense of one’s place in the world. In turn, narrative inscriptions of events on the landscape transform the physical topography of a place into an array of sites where memories of ancestral wisdom and historical traumas endure. (...) By anchoring historians’ representations of the past in the places and locales in which events took place, geography constructs a third space analogous to the third time of history. The aporias engendered by the phenomenology of time, however, have no equivalent in the phenomenology of space. The dissymmetry between the dialectic that informs the discourse of space and the one that informs the discourse of time thus keeps in place the reciprocal relation between geography and historiography. (shrink)

Reference to Merleau-Ponty's ideas surfaces in environmental thinking from time to time. This paper examines whether, and in what way, his ideas could be helpful to that thinking. In order to arrive at a conclusion I examine in detail and attempt to clarify the notions of 'Flesh' and 'Earth' in order to see if they can carry the meanings that commentators sometimes attribute to them. With a clearer outline of what he was saying in place, I suggest that the (...) new ontology that Merleau-Ponty introduces could help to transform environmental thinking, but that careful argumentation is required to show this. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of embodiment has been widely adopted by enactivists seeking to provide an account of cognition that is both embodied and embedded. Yet very little attention has been paid to Merleau-Ponty’s later works. This is troubling given that in The Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty revises his conception of embodied subjectivity because he came to the realization that understanding consciousness through the concepts of subject and object imposed a dualistic framework that he was trying to escape. To overcome (...) this dichotomy Merleau-Ponty more fully develops the radically embodied ontology implicit in his earlier work by introducing the concept of flesh. I argue that the enactive account of subjectivity would be improved by “giving flesh” to the enactive subject, given that the enactive account of subjectivity as grounded in pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness is ultimately rooted in accounts of which the later Merleau-Ponty is critical. Incorporating flesh resolves the underlying problems with the enactive account of subjectivity and makes the account more consistent with the ontological commitments to embodiment and embeddedness. (shrink)

[This is a commentary article on Michel Bitbol's TA: "The Tangled Dialectic of Body and Consciousness: A Metaphysical Counterpart of Radical Neurophenomenology".] -/- A summary of the major metaphysical positions reveals them to be variable enough that they do not deny experience to the researcher. Further, Merleau-Ponty’s intra-ontology and related terms are fleshed out.

Through a wide-ranging discussion, that extends from Ovid and Leonardo da Vinci to Gerhard Richter, and from philosophy and literature to time-based art, Kaja ...

Certain forms of art privilege the ellipsis. For example, in poetry, one has only to think of Mallarmé's Un Coup de dés for ellipsis to mark its peculiar trace upon the processes of meaning. Nonetheless, because ellipsis situates itself so curiously between meaning and signification, a formal definition may seem too categorical in explaining what ellipsis can do in its between-state, flanked by visuality, semiotics and signification. This article examines how Merleau- Ponty, Derrida and Deleuze, employ textual-visual and ontological-perceptual strategies (...) for making sense of this slippery signifier. These strategies allow us to think through examples of ellipsis in the writing of Hélène Cixous and in the photographs of Robert Frank, in terms of semantic, affective, aesthetic and material qualities. (shrink)

This paper has four parts. First, I attempt to pinpoint how and why Merleau-Ponty was driven to go beyond Husserlian phenomenology, and did so for what are, largely, Hegelian reasons. Second, I trace the parallels between Hegel’s “metaphysics of Spirit” and Merleau-Ponty’s “ontology of the Flesh,” stressing the thinkers’ consensus about the nature of philosophical method. Third, I identify Merleau-Ponty’s criticisms of Hegel’s approach, and assay his claim that Hegel’s system actually constitutes a lapse into a pre-critical, pre-Kantian, (...) naïve metaphysics. Fourth and finally, I examine how Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Hegel is tied to his investigation into the evolution of the concept of nature through the history of Western philosophy. My basic intention is to determine whether and to what extent Merleau-Ponty evades the very charges he levies against Hegel, and my basic claim is that he does. I conclude by suggesting some parallels between Merleau-Ponty’s later thought and the account of nature in Whitehead’s process philosophy that might tell us where to seek help for developing his later, enigmatic ideas once precedents in Continental thought have been exhausted. (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure Merleau-Ponty’s assertion: “everything will have to begin again, in politics as well as in philosophy”. In pursuing his later work, Merleau-Ponty signalled the need for a reconfiguration of his philosophical vision, so it was no longer caught in Cartesianism and the philosophy of consciousness. This required a turn towards ontology through which he consolidated two key ideas: firstly, a pervasive interdependence articulated in his reversibility thesis and the ontology of ‘ (...) class='Hi'>flesh’; secondly, a radical contingency at the heart of existence. This paper interrogates the political implications of these ideas, and specifically regarding humanism and human progress. Relatedly, I address the question – how might recognitions of ontological interdependence and radical contingency support a flourishing democracy? Merleau-Ponty’s early political work concerned the issues of his day – Nazism, Marxism and the status of humanism – and did not engage extensively with these emerging onto-political concerns. Nonetheless, there are indicative reflections in the writings and interviews; the political implications of his ontological interrogations become more thematic in the later works. There is no rupture between the earlier and later works regarding his philosophical vision, although he later distanced himself from Marxism with revelations of the gulags under Stalin and the Korean War. The overarching claim of this paper – we need to rethink politics from the ground up beginning with ontology; ontology is political and the political is intrinsically ontologically informed. Getting the ontology ‘right’ is a matter of discovery and not theory choice. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the idea of space-time in its philosophical specificity. Such an approach must satisfy three main conditions. First, the inquiry must meditate on the link epitomized by the hyphen in the expression “space-time”. Second, it must not reduce either space to time or time to space, but must instead explore the significance of their in-between-ness and of their interweaving reality. Third, the inquiry must rid itself of any priority of space over time or of time over (...) space that would take place in the mediation of space-time. I explore whether there is a metaphysical approach that might be able to articulate the organic link of space-time epitomized by the hyphen in order to grasp the philosophical meaning of its irreducible, deep, and fleshly thickness. I argue that Merleau-Ponty might usher in decisive clues and some insightful tools for building such a theory. I accordingly begin by discussing his later topic of an endo-ontology, linking together concepts such as endospace and endo-time. Starting from there, I examine what he finally envisions as the chiasm and nexus of space-time. (shrink)