Institution in personal and public history. Introduction -- Institution and life -- Institution of a feeling -- The institution of a work of art -- Institution of a domain of knowledge -- The field of culture -- Historical institution: particularity and universality -- Summary for Thursday's course: Institution in personal and public history -- The problem of passivity: sleep, the unconscious, memory. The philosophy and the phenomenon of passivity -- For an ontology of the perceived world -- Sleep -- Perceptual (...) consciousness and imagining consciousness -- Symbolism -- Dreams -- The Freudian unconscious -- Delusions: gradiva -- The case of Dora -- The problem of memory -- Appendix: three notes on the Freudian unconscious -- Summary for Monday's course: the problem of passivity: sleep, the unconscious, memory. (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)

Continuing the posthumous editions of the manuscripts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty started in 1964, we publish the preparation notes for the courses of the College of France of 1959 and 1961. Each of these courses questions in a different way the philosophical exercise. How is philosophy possible today after the phenomenological enterprise? In the course of 1959, Merleau-Ponty presented a study by Husserl and Heidegger. It shows the contributions but also the limits. In addition, he has recourse to the (...) interpretation of the philosophy developed by Hegel and Marx, and his gesture is also given as a work of self-interpretation. The reading he suggests of Descartes makes the different levels of his approach sensitive. It seemed interesting to us to associate with his course notes the first writing of the chapter “Interrogation and intuition” of the Visible and the invisible which is in great affinity with the problems approached in these courses. This draft of the Visible and the Invisible, abandoned by Merleau-Ponty, makes it possible to mark the difference in style from the preparation notes which, as Claude Lefort writes, “do not exactly constitute a writing”. Rather, they offer food for thought to continue to question the philosopher's thinking. (shrink)

This article studies a link between perception and politics by seeking, in Merleau-Ponty’s work, something like a “mirror relation” in the domains of encounters of love and politics. While in Phenomenology of Perception the analysis of sexuality seemingly renders love impossible, in the courses on Institution, Merleau-Ponty affirms the possibility of love by characterizing it as an institution, a sensible idea, a “mirror relation”. When the lover demands signs of love from the loved one, he demands (...) to see in the eyes, the voice, and the experience of the other his own reflection, the reflection of his experience, his words, his gestures, and the demand of love that he is formulating. The promise of love is thus an institution of sense which sheds a new light on all actions past and future, it is a way of overcoming contingency. Conceiving of politics as a “mirror relation” thus means adopting a careful philosophy that observes the event like a mirror and gives place to sensible ideas, at the intersection of gazes understood as a “type of reflection”. (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)

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

The aim of this essay is to connect the notion of the Anthropocene with Merleau-Pontyan thought by drawing on two aspects of the author’s ontological reflection. First, I consider “the event of the Anthropocene” as an event that is part of an instituting dynamic, in reference to the ontological dimension of “Institution” that Merleau-Ponty borrows from Husserl and develops in an original way in his 1954-1955 lectures at the Collège de France. I then underline the difficulties that arise (...) when multiple names are employed to designate our “current geological era” in debates on the Anthropocene, a complex global event with political, ethical, and social dimensions. To conclude, I show that this multiplication of names is constitutive of the event of the Anthropocene. The Merleau-Pontyan idea of “a theme that constitutes itself through its variations,” introduced by Mauro Carbone in his work on sensible ideas and the “arche-screen” and closely linked to the element of “Institution,” can help us find philosophical advancements at the heart of this contemporary naming debate. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to connect the notion of the Anthropocene with Merleau-Pontyan thought by drawing on two aspects of the author’s ontological reflection. First, I consider “the event of the Anthropocene” as an event that is part of an instituting dynamic, in reference to the ontological dimension of “Institution” that Merleau-Ponty borrows from Husserl and develops in an original way in his 1954-1955 lectures at the Collège de France. I then underline the difficulties that arise (...) when multiple names are employed to designate our “current geological era” in debates on the Anthropocene, a complex global event with political, ethical, and social dimensions. To conclude, I show that this multiplication of names is constitutive of the event of the Anthropocene. The Merleau-Pontyan idea of “a theme that constitutes itself through its variations,” introduced by Mauro Carbone in his work on sensible ideas and the “arche-screen” and closely linked to the element of “Institution,” can help us find philosophical advancements at the heart of this contemporary naming debate. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to connect the notion of the Anthropocene with Merleau-Pontyan thought by drawing on two aspects of the author’s ontological reflection. First, I consider “the event of the Anthropocene” as an event that is part of an instituting dynamic, in reference to the ontological dimension of “Institution” that Merleau-Ponty borrows from Husserl and develops in an original way in his 1954-1955 lectures at the Collège de France. I then underline the difficulties that arise (...) when multiple names are employed to designate our “current geological era” in debates on the Anthropocene, a complex global event with political, ethical, and social dimensions. To conclude, I show that this multiplication of names is constitutive of the event of the Anthropocene. The Merleau-Pontyan idea of “a theme that constitutes itself through its variations,” introduced by Mauro Carbone in his work on sensible ideas and the “arche-screen” and closely linked to the element of “Institution,” can help us find philosophical advancements at the heart of this contemporary naming debate. (shrink)

The concepts of Fundierung (“foundation” or “founding”) and Stiftung (“institution” or “instituting”) play a prominent role in the work of Edmund Husserl, who employs Fundierung to describe relations of essential necessity in “static” analyses of intentional consciousness, and Stiftung to describe movements of sedimentation and reactivation in “genetic” analyses of the co-advent of consciousness and the world. Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, employs the notion of Stiften (“establishing”) in his ontological questioning of the disclosure of the truth of beings. It is, therefore, (...) surprising that scholars tend to assume, if not explicitly assert, that Merleau-Ponty treats Fundierung and Stiftung as synonyms. I argue, on the contrary, that Fundierung and Stiftung take on increasingly divergent functions over the course of Merleau-Ponty’s writings, with Stiftung ultimately giving voice to the “ontological operations” of individuation through intertwining whereby sensible and sentient beings, qua flesh, give birth to sense. In particular, I take seriously Merleau-Ponty’s account of Stiftung – from Institution and Passivity onward – as a “double relation of Fundierung”; given that Fundierung is already a “double relation” between the founding and the founded term, Stiftung must be conceived as a “fourfold” relation, wherein each term is simultaneously founding and founded, relative to the other. This fourfold structure articulates the relation of “simultaneity” or “existential eternity” between beings and sense in their advent. By tracing the development of the concept of Stiftung in Merleau-Ponty’s work, I attempt to show that interpreting his thinking of la chair as an “ontology of institution” – in the sense of an articulation of the movement of existence as relations of Stiftung – highlights the originality of his ontologization of Husserlian phenomenology, and thereby his status as a “foundational” thinker in his own right, rather than a merely regional thinker of embodiment.Les concepts de Fundierung (fondation) et de Stiftung (institution) jouent un rôle central dans l’oeuvre d’Edmund Husserl, qui emploie Fundierung pour décrire des relations de nécessité essentielle dans les analyses « statiques » de la conscience intentionnelle, et Stiftung pour décrire les mouvements de sédimentation et de réactivation dans les analyses « génétiques » de l’avènement concomitant de la conscience et du monde. Martin Heidegger, de son côté, emploie la notion de Stiften (instituer, établir) dans son questionnement ontologique du dévoilement de la vérité de l’être. C’est pourquoi il est surprenant que les commentateurs tendent à supposer, sinon à affirmer, que Merleau-Ponty traite Fundierung et Stiftung comme des synonymes. Je soutiens au contraire que ces deux notions exercent des fonctions de plus en plus divergentes dans ses écrits, où la Stiftung exprime au fond les « opérations ontologiques » de l’individuation à travers l’entrelacement par lequel les êtres sensibles et sentants (en tant que chair) donnent naissance au sens. En particulier, je prends au sérieux la conception merleau-pontienne de la Stiftung – à partir des cours sur L’Institution et la passivité – comme « une double relation de Fundierung » ; étant donné que la Fundierung est déjà une « double relation » entre le terme fondant et le terme fondé, la Stiftung doit être conçue comme une relation « quadripartite » dans laquelle chaque terme est simultanément fondant et fondé, relatif à l’autre. Cette structure quadripartite articule la relation de « simultanéité » ou d’« éternité existentielle » entre les étants et le sens dans leur avènement. En retraçant le développement du concept de Stiftung dans les travaux de Merleau-Ponty, je tente de montrer que l’interprétation de sa pensée de la chair comme une « ontologie de l’institution » – au sens d’une articulation du mouvement de l’existence comme relations de Stiftung – souligne l’originalité de son ontologisation de la phénoménologie husserlienne, et par là son statut comme penseur « fondationnel » de plein droit, plutôt qu’un penseur simplement régional de l’incarnation.I concetti di Fundierung (fondazione) e di Stiftung (istituzione) ricoprono un ruolo centrale nell’opera di Edmund Husserl, che si serve del termine Fundierung per descrivere le relazioni di necessità nelle analisi “statiche” della coscienza intenzionale, e di Stiftung per descrivere i movimenti di sedimentazione e di riattivazione nelle analisi “genetiche” del co-avvento di coscienza e mondo. Inoltre, Martin Heidegger usa il termine Stiften (istituire, stabilire) nella sua interrogazione ontologica dello svelamento della verità dell’essere. Per questo, risulta sorprendente che i commentatori di Merleau-Ponty tendano a supporre, se non ad affermare, che il filosofo tratti Fundierung e Stiftung come dei sinonimi. Ritengo al contrario che queste due nozioni rivestano funzioni progressivamente divergenti nei suoi scritti, dal momento che la Stiftung viene ad esprimere le “operazioni ontologiche” dell’individuazione attraverso l’intreccio per cui gli esseri sensibili e senzienti (in quanto carne) permettono la nascita del senso. In particolare, prendo in considerazione la concezione merleau-pontiana della Stiftung – a partire dai corsi sull’istituzione e la passività – come una “doppia relazione di Fundierung”. Nella misura in cui la Fundierung è già una “doppia relazione” tra termine fondante e termine fondato, la Stiftung deve essere pensata come una relazione “quadripartita” in cui ogni termine è simultaneamente fondante e fondato, relativamente all’altro. Questa struttura quadripartita articola la relazione di “simultaneità” o d’“eternità esistenziale” tra gli enti e il senso nel loro avvenimento. Ritracciando lo sviluppo del concetto di Stiftung nei testi di Merleau-Ponty, tento dunque di mostrare come un’interpretazione della sua filosofia della carne come “ontologia dell’istituzione” – nel senso di un’articolazione del movimento dell’esistenza come relazione di Stiftung – metta in luce l’originalità della sua ontologizzazione della fenomenologia husserliana. Ne emerge dunque a pieno titolo un pensatore “fondazionale”, piuttosto che un pensatore semplicemente regionale dell’incarnazione. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Husserl has been understood along a spectrum running from outright repudiation to deep appreciation. The aim of this paper is to clarify a significant and heretofore largely neglected unifying thread connecting Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, while also demonstrating its general philosophical import for phenomenological philosophy. On this account, the details of a programmatic philosophical continuity between these two phenomenologists can be structured around the concept of motivation. Merleau-Ponty sees in Husserl’s concept of motivation a necessary (...) and innovative concept that we must formulate in order to properly theorize the anonymous and passive functioning of “operative intentionality.” Motivation is the principle that bridges this domain with the egoic life of consciousness. Merleau-Ponty’s focus on anonymity, bodily habit, and other facets of operative intentionality are thus not a repudiation of Husserl’s analyses of intentionality, but rather a deepening of the notion of consciousness. I conclude by showing how Merleau-Ponty’s early work on motivation lays the conceptual groundwork for his later rethinking of intentionality in terms of institution, and thus mature ontology of the flesh. (shrink)

This book consists of Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.

"Le problème de la passivité: le sommeil, l'inconscient, la mémoire", éd. scientifique et transcription Stéphanie Ménasé, p.155-297; "L'Institution dans l'histoire personnelle et publique" éd. scientifique et transcription Dominique Darmaillacq, p. 31-122; Préface Claude Lefort.

This paper develops an ontology of sound from Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of linguistic expression and political communication framed in terms of the instituted-instituting character of the “flesh.” The analysis explores the role of sound and hearing in experiencing and making sense of a world in order to explain two problems: first, the impact of hearing loss on a person’s relations with others and with their environment and, second, the impact of “trump talk” on the fabric of political community. The argument (...) is that hearing loss and “trump talk” weaken or erase what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the “spirit” of communication and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This paper develops an ontology of sound from Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of linguistic expression and political communication framed in terms of the instituted-instituting character of the “flesh.” The analysis explores the role of sound and hearing in experiencing and making sense of a world in order to explain two (arguably related) problems: first, the impact of hearing loss on a person’s relations with others and with their environment and, second, the impact of “trump talk” on the fabric of political community. (...) The argument is that hearing loss and “trump talk” weaken or erase what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the “spirit” of communication and intersubjectivity. (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)

INTRODUCTION HOW DIFFERENT — HOW DOWNRIGHT INCONGRUOUS — the philosophical essays and the ad hoc, primarily political observations which make up this volume ...

Resume. of. the. Course: Husserl. at. the. Limits. of. Phenomenology. Translated by John O'Neill and revised by Leonard Lawlor Since we still lack a complete edition of Husserl's Nachlass, the following discussion can hardly pretend to be ...

This is a major contribution to political theory and philosophy.

Pour faire suite au premier volume, qui couvrait les années 1935 à 1951, Parcours deux rassemble les textes difficilement accessibles de Merleau-Ponty élaborés durant les dix dernières années de sa vie. Y figurent notamment les lettres de la rupture avec Sartre, des écrits politiques, philosophiques (autour de Husserl et Malebranche), ou sur la psychanalyse, ou encore un entretien avec Madeleine Chapsal. Le mérite de cet ensemble est de donner à comprendre l'unité d'une pensée saisie sur le vif à travers (...) la diversité d'écrits théoriques brefs ou de textes d'intervention. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) has been hailed by many as the greatest French thinker of the twentieth century. As one of the founding members of the existentialist movement in the 1940s, he played a key role in introducing the work of Husserl and Heidegger into French thought and collaborated with Jean-Paul Sartre in the founding of Les Temps Modernes. His later work laid the foundation for the development of French thought in the direction of post-structuralism and post-modernism.

(...) class='Hi'>Merleau-Ponty: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers gathers together the best critical writing on Merleau-Ponty’s work from the last half century. The collection includes early reviews of his work and the reactions of his contemporaries both during and after his life. Also covered are examinations of his relationship with Husserl, Sartre and the phenomenological tradition, investigations of key themes from his work on ontology, expression and politics, and the ongoing application of his thinking to such contemporary areas of interest as feminist theory, psychology and child development, environmental philosophy and cognitive science.

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Contents INTRODUCTION: PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE POLITICAL IN PATOČKA AND MERLEAU-PONTY 11 1. Memory and community 11 2. Patočka 18 3. Merleau-Ponty, Husserl and institution 22 4. The political context 28 5. Status of the current research 32 6. Overview of the chapters 34 CHAPTER 1: THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL EPOCHĒ AND THE POLITICAL 39 1. Introduction 39 2. Criticism of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld 46 3. The a priori of the World 49 4. The subject and the epochē (...) 56 5. Epochē to polis 61 6. Two ways into the epochē: myth and “le bouc émissaire” 76 7. A “public/private” distinction in the performing of the epochē 84 CHAPTER 2: THE BODY AT THE FRONT: CORPOREITY AND COMMUNITY IN JAN PATOČKA’S HERETICAL ESSAYS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 89 1. Introduction 89 2. The front 94 3. The double determination of life: Patočka and Foucault on “war” 98 4. Rooting 126 5. The body at the front 135 CHAPTER 3: LOOKING-IN ON EUROPE 145 1. Introduction 145 2. Post-Europe 147 3. Globalization as shaking 157 4. The idea of culture 162 5. Looking-in on Europe 164 6. The borders of Europe: towards a post-European democracy 175 a. Polemos and boundary 175 b. The skin and the soul 178 c. Europe and the boundary 190 CHAPTER 4: HUSSERL ON STIFTUNG AND STYLE 201 1. Introduction 201 2. Husserl’s concepts of retention institution and the possibility of an “institutional unconscious” 202 a. Retention 202 b. Husserl’s notion of institution in §50 of the Cartesian Meditations 210 c. Difficulties 220 d. Retention as unconscious 221 3. Husserl´s concept of style in Ideas II 236 a. Introduction 236 b. Institution and style 237 c. Style 243 d. Style and intersubjectivity 248 e. Style and politics in Merleau-Ponty 254 4. §15 of the Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: “Reflection on the method of our historical manner of investigation” 259 a. Stiftung as the task of history 259 b. Endstiftung 269 c. Endstiftung and Style 272 5. Community and surrounding world in section three of Ideas II 274 6. “The Origin of Geometry” 291 CHAPTER 5: STIFTUNG AND STYLE IN MERLEAU-PONTY 303 1. Introduction 303 2. Institution and Style 304 a. event/advent 304 b. The opening of a field 308 c. The relation to the past, or subterranean communication across time: Urstiftung—Nachstiftung—Endstiftung 310 d. Style 312 e. Latency 314 3. Three painters: Matisse, Cézanne, and Vermeer 319 a. Matisse 319 b. Cézanne 325 c. Vermeer 337 4. The historical field 344 a. The field of praxis 344 b. Symbolic matrices 355 c. Matrix institutions 361 CHAPTER 6: THE NOBLE MEMORY: SURVIVAL, DEMOCRACY AND RESISTANCE 371 1. Introduction 371 a. “Resistance” and “survival” 371 b. The plaque 372 c. “Inertia” and “movement” 378 d. Difficulties 383 e. Vulnerability 385 2. Institution and parliamentary democracy 391 a. Merleau-Ponty’s support for parliamentary democracy 391 b. An institution of institutions 396 c. “Regime” and “corps de l’État” 400 d. Survival 406 e. Institution and reparation 421 f. Institution and revolution 423 g. Democracy, epochē, and virtù 424 h. Concrete political action 429 3. Resistance 430 a. The “mythical” past and the “verbal-Wesen of society” 432 b. The generality of freedom and the unconscious 441 c. Endstiftung, Telos and Truth 442 CONCLUSIONS 451 BIBLIOGRAPHY 471. (shrink)

The Possibility of Philosophy presents the notes Maurice Merleau-Ponty prepared for three courses he taught at the Collège de France. Two of these courses were the last he taught before his unexpected death in 1961.

This is a collection of three studies of both retrospective and prospective significance for the author s preoccupation with the philosophical problems arising out of the transcendentalist orientation. The aim of the present work is to focus on the notion of the paradoxical alliance of unity and difference of the transcendentalist ego and the human subject. To think this notion through in terms of its implications and consequences and to rethink the nature and method of philosophy, its relation to language (...) and to the sciences, is what the author means by the humanization of transcendental philosophy.The first study addresses the genesis of the problematic of humanization in Husserl s phenomenology of the life-world; the second seeks to understand the presuppositions and consequences of Heidegger s transformation of phenomenology into fundamental ontology; and the third takes up the themes explored by Husserl and Heidegger as they enter into Merleau-Ponty s thought. In the Epilogue, the author seeks to balance the logocentrism of phenomenology with the biocentrism of a philosophy of life.The late R. Sundara Rajan was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Poona, Pune, Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and Senior Fellow at the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi, India. (shrink)

The three themes of perception, expression, and history proved to be significant and consistent concerns of Merleau-Ponty from his earliest to his latest writings. In turn, Merleau-Ponty was concerned to discover and show how meaning emerged within the context of each of these themes. My main goal in this essay will be to trace ways that Merleau-Ponty conceived of this emergence, and to how his conceptions underwent increasing sophistication from his earlier to later writings. In section I, (...) I show how a kind of perceptual meaning arises out of an exchange between subject and object, perceived and perceived, and the visible and invisible. In section II, I show how expressive meaning arises out of an exchange between the spoken and speaking word, and the synchronic and diachronic registers of language. In these sections, I also point out that what starts roughly as binary dialogue (characterized by consummate reciprocity) between these matrices of meaning evolves into a more ambiguous interplay (characterized by such later ontological notions as invisibility, reversibility, and the flesh). In section III, I show how meaning arises in history out of an ambiguous interplay between past and present, ideas and institutions, the collective and individual, and the pre-determined and the free; and I suggest ways Merleau-Ponty might have integrated earlier scattered thoughts about meaning's emergence in history with his later ontology, had his work in these directions not been cut short. (shrink)

This paper aims to restore, from the political thought of Merleau-Ponty, the rightful place of conflict. To achieve this hypothetical premise it is necessary to consider some issues that are woven into possible readings of the origin or foundation of politics. First, tracing back to the original cartesian proposition that the body is related with extensive substance invalid when detecting who we are. Then, considering the reading Merleau-Ponty makes of Machiavelli considering the notion of riot or mass (...) under a conflicting structure of politics in relation to the subject. In this regard, it is noted from this reading, the conditions proposed by Merleau-Ponty to highlight the importance of the singular in a politically shared space. And finally, to understand these problem areas of the history of philosophy as their own "world of life" where the contingent has a particular sense understood as the ontological place of the practical subject. Thus, in this context, it is possible to reconcile from Merleau-Ponty in the area of the contingent, body and language; what is felt and thought; perceived and settled. To understand the features of sedimentation helps to the formation of the localized subject; that is, it habituated or instituted. (shrink)

This article shows that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is traversed by a tension between an interpretation of history and existence in terms of crisis and the recognition of an insurmountable vertigo, the Heraclitean model of an eternal return of the singular and the partial, without possible synthesis. Our thesis is that the model of the crisis is marked by a classical positivism which makes it the secret ally of a conservative and anti-democratic politics. It is also an impasse in (...) class='Hi'>Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy since it supposes a reference to an overlooking point of view that the whole of Merleau-Pontian reflection has shown to be impossible. The phenomenology of perception and ontology of the perceived world show that we have access only to a mystified consciousness and that even the world itself is undecided. The Heraclitean path must win against the interpretation in terms of crisis, but the persistence of the second path in Merleau-Ponty’swork is also explained by the extremely difficult character of the first path. The theory of chronic vertigo takes us closer to nihilism, and this is an aspect of Merleau-Pontian philosophy whose radical and highly problematic – perhaps even aporetic – character must not be underestimated. How to decide on practice and politics without absolute reference, without being able to guarantee anything? The use Merleau-Ponty makes of crucial references to Machiavelli and Marx at the heart of his political philosophy is very revealing this regard: in the first movement, this is a matter of “disarming” these philosophies, making them instruments for the disruption of action. But Merleau-Ponty’s final goal is not to return to the philosophy of contemplation, abstract ontology, but to build a new practical model: that of symbolic action, which integrates vertigo rather than surpassing it and constitutes a praxis inseparable from the enterprise of knowledge and artistic creation. We could say that it is saved by its openness to sense, but this means that it cannot rely on any positive established meaning and must find its wellspring in a ‘wild’ ability to be unceasingly decentered, to take nothing for granted, to approach our values and beliefs as foreign. This raises the question of the possibilityof the incarnation of such a model in an effective political institution. (shrink)

This paper examines Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy of time in light of his critique and reconceptualization of Edmund Husserl’s early time-analyses. Drawing on The Visible and the Invisible and lecture courses, I elaborate Merleau-Ponty’s re-reading of Husserl’s time-analyses through the lens of Rudolf Bernet’s “Einleitung” to this work. My question is twofold: what becomes of the central Husserlian concepts of present and retention in Merleau-Ponty’s later work, and how do Husserl’s elisions, especially of the problem of forgetting, (...) become generative moments for Merleau-Ponty’s thought on time? The answer passes through the logic of institution as the “retrograde movement of the true” (Henri Bergson) and through unconsciousness as disarticulation of the perceptual field, as Merleau-Ponty attempts to detach Husserlian concepts from the philosophy of consciousness and rehabilitate them within an ontology of time. (shrink)

[In Czech] Merleau-Ponty holds that Husserl’s descriptions of the body go beyond the conceptual framework of subject-object ontology to which his philosophy is usually thought to conform. Merleau-Ponty says of his own philosophy that it is founded on the circularity in the body; that is, on the fact that from the ontological point of view, perception and availability to be perceived, are one and the same in the body. The inseparability of these two aspects of the body he (...) calls "flesh" (chair). According to Husserl, I perceive my body such that in a certain perceived object I also co-perceive sensations roused by the perception of that object – I observe the “consequential parallel” between two series of objective and subjective phenomena. Husserl argues that the unity of the body should be descrived as a double unity, and the body as a subject-object. In this article I analyse Husserl’s example of two hands of the same body touching mutually and, following Merleau-Ponty, I attempt to show that the body can appear to itself as an object only on the basis of a differentiation of the body as a particular field of perceiving. The body as a double unity of subject and object is therefore grounded in the body as a pre-objective and pre-subjective field; that is, in flesh as Merleau-Ponty understands it. This is also the point of departure for an original conception of ontology as we find it in his later philosophy. [In Czech language.]. (shrink)

This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole as well as the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist’s views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such, but is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, (...) and that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself. Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy. This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty. Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels. (shrink)

This paper draws on the philosophies of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and Hannah Arendt in order to explore the nature of free action. Part one outlines three familiar ways in which we often understand the nature of freedom. Part two argues that these common understandings of freedom are rooted in impoverished conceptions of time and subjectivity. Part three engages with Arendt’s conception of natality alongside Merleau‐Ponty’s conception of expression in order to argue that the freely acting self draws in improvisational (...) manners on the resources of a shared past in order to open unprecedented spaces of meaning for the future, and in so doing at once discovers and institutes herself as the self that she is. Part four draws on an example of anti‐oppressive political action in order to argue that free action not only has the power to inaugurate new spaces of shared meaning for the future, but also to change the sens of the shared past. By the same token, free action is vulnerable in its ontological status and ethical meanings to the events and judgments of the future. Part five argues with both Merleau‐Ponty and Arendt that ethical‐political actors can do no better than to cultivate a political virtù while facing up to the inherently transgressive dimensions of free action in a shared historical world. (shrink)

Starting from a specific critique of the traditional «metaphysical mistake», Hannah Arendt comes to supporta “phenomenalism” that is not only radical but also spectacular in the sense that it enhances, not appearances that would replace an unknown being or substance, but an appearing as a unique exhibition on the world stage in view of an opinion to communicate or an action to perform. Along this path, an encounter with Merleau-Ponty’s thought can occur at several levels. Specifically, the thesis of (...) the ‘spectacular’ character of the world is presented in Arendt’s political theory as intimately linked to the thesis of an aesthetic and, at the same time, ontological basis of experience, which relates her thought to the Merleau-Pontian theory of vision as “thought conditioned” by the world and “which advents” as “instituted” in a body that is properly its own. For Arendt, thought is not only invisible, it is also ontologically visible as “doxa” in which it is divided into “aspects of world” that are revealed in a “specular” fashion as positions to take and show “outside,” to present and defend. This is a valuable asset in the context of political “advertising.”. (shrink)

Starting from a specific critique of the traditional «metaphysical mistake» (to take apart being and appearing), Hannah Arendt points out the necessity to support a radical “phenomenalism”, which can be able to become politically relevant through 'spectacularity'. Far from the task of replacing an unknown being or substance, in Arendt's view all appearances are phenomena enhancing a singular exhibition on the 'world stage' in order to communicate an opinion or to perform deeds. Along this path, the encounter with Merleau-Ponty’s (...) thought occurs at several levels. Specifically, the thesis of the ‘spectacular’ character of the world reveals itself in Arendt’s political theory as intimately linked to the thesis of an aesthetic and, at the same time ontological basis of experience, where opinion 'opens' to determined 'portions' of being. Such features of Arendt's political theory join it to Merleau-Ponty's theory of vision as “conditioned thought ” (by the world), “which advents” as “instituted” in a singular proper-body (Eye and Mind). According to Arendt, thought itself has to be considered not only as invisible (The Life of the Mind), but as a visible “doxa”, showing specific “aspects of world”, also revealed as specific positions to take and to defend in public. The paper suggests that the theoretical encounter of the two philosophers is a valuable asset in the context of contemporary political “publicity”. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy is an ambitious collected volume of fourteen chapters, accompanied by an epilogue by Jean-Luc Nancy, in which current Merleau-Ponty scholars together aim to demonstrate the urgent relevance of Merleau-Ponty to contemporary philosophy across a range of fields including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art. Divided into four thematic sections, namely, “Legacies”, “Mind and Nature”, “Politics, Power, and Institution” and “Art and Aesthetics”, this collected volume provides a rich (...) resource for Merleau-Ponty scholars who are interested in novel applications and understudied aspects of his thought. It also opens up Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre to the general reader, presenting many possible entry-ways into the diversity of his work. In my review of Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, I suggest that each of its thematic sections could have been the subject of a separate volume themselves, and that the volume would then perhaps have not suffered from a number of poorly developed lines of argumentation. But I consider that the inclusion of all these thematically diverse sections in a single volume nonetheless presents a forceful display of the wide-ranging relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s work to contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

生とは一体何か。また生はどのように現れるのか。それは、現象学において生活（としての）世界（Lebenswelt）として現れる。だが、フッサールが試みる生活世界の存在論は、狭義の生の現象学ではない。加え て、彼は生活世界を自我の超越論的生から理解する。この問題を解決するには、ハイデッガー、M.アンリ、レヴィナスによる様々な生の現象学があるが、それに対して徹底的な反論がある。生の現象学を凌駕するには、メ ルロ＝ポンティと共に、生きることの形而上学を取り上げる必要がある。それは、意識の様々な「段階」（驚き及び認識）、「豊かな矛盾」、「フェール（なす、作る、・・・させる）」（faire）等といった概念を通 じて可能になる。.

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[In Czech] Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of the pathology of perception show “objective” and “subjective” events have sense for the living body only in relation to its whole equilibrium, that is, to how it organises itself overall and how it thus “meets” those events. If we apply this conception to Husserl’s example of two mutually-touching hands of one body we must then state not that we perceive here a coincidence of certain subjective sensations with certain objective qualities, but rather that my (...) body, in the sense of an object, results from the restructuralisation of the whole field of the body accomplished by the the body as the performer of perceptual intentions. The body-object, and for the same reasons also the body-subject, is therefore the product of the analysis of the body in the sense of a field of structuralisation or polarisation, not its original phenomenological “stratum”, as in Husserl. If the body understands itself as perceptible only by a change of its own structure, inasmuch as it is a certain field of structuralisation, then the "external” thing, which is likewise a pole of such grasping, must belong to the same ontological “field” as the body. Merleau-Ponty’s “flesh”, that is the circularity between questioning of perception and answering of the perceived, is thus a phenomenon appearing beyond the boundary of the body as a singular being. This fact allows the concept of flesh to be extended and to be understood as an “element”, that is, as a dimension in which individual beings appear. [In Czech language.]. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Husserl’s concept of Leib in light of Merleau‐Ponty’s interpretation of the human body as an ontologically significant phenomenon. I first analyze Husserl’s account of the body as a “two‐fold unity” and demonstrate the problematic nature of its four implications, namely, the ambiguous ontological status of the body as subject‐object, the view of “my body” as “my object,” the preconstitutive character of the unity of the body, and the restriction of the constitution of the body to touch (...) alone. Building on this analysis, I explain how Merleau‐Ponty resolves the difficulties raised by Husserl’s account by reversing it. According to Merleau‐Ponty, “flesh” is not a two‐fold reality comprising subjective and objective aspects, but an ontological dimension from which these aspects can be abstracted through specific cognitive operations. Consequently, all subjective and objective aspects, even beyond the boundaries of one’s body, must be understood as founded in the indivisible unity of flesh. I argue that a thorough phenomenological description of the human body requires abandoning Husserl’s concept of Leib because it contributes to perpetuating subject‐object dualism. In contrast, Merleau‐Ponty’s notion of flesh reveals the circularity between subject and object and its general ontological significance. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s Institution Course Notes to clarify Patrick Wolfe’s claim that, for settler colonialism, “invasion is a structure, not an event.” I also engage critically with colonial assumptions in Merleau-Ponty’s own work, including his Eurocentric response to questions such as: “[I]s there a field of world history or universal history? Is there an intended accomplishment? A closure on itself? A true society?” In this essay, I ask different questions – with Merleau-Ponty, against (...) him, and beyond him. I neither defend Merleau-Ponty against his own worst self nor disown him as “bad” philosophical kin. Rather, I learn what I can from Merleau-Ponty for a critical phenomenology of settler colonialism and for amplifying movements to transform and abolish settler colonial structures at the level of thought, being, and politics. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty states in his Institution and Passivity lectures that he wants to "consider criticism itself as a symbolic form" as opposed to doing "a philosophy of symbolic form." This statement seems counterintuitive for Merleau-Ponty, who has been called "the philosopher of the sensible." In this book, Kaushik investigates this question, arguing that Merleau-Ponty has raised the stakes of his ontology such that it is no longer a matter of finding a solution to the difference between "the real (...) and the fictive" but rather, of constellating and matrixing them. This ontological matrix amounts to a psychoanalysis of the philosophy of identity. Kaushik argues that philosophies of reflection, in which reflection seeks to coincide with its origins, are in fact uncritical because they miss the form of differentiation that limits them. His analyses of the matrices between space-imagination, light-dark, awake-asleep, repression-expression, etc., subvert these philosophies and reveal the symbolic form in terms of its lack of precise origin or destination. Drawing from recently published course materials of Merleau-Ponty's, and attentive to his reliance on literary phrases for phenomenological insights, Kaushik brings out the living force of Merleau-Ponty's thought and develops his radical insight of the primacy of the symbolic form, even in an ontology that claims to be about the sensible and its elements. (shrink)