The Subject in Nature: Reflections on Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception

Abstract

On the occasion of the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Husserl’s birth, Merleau-Ponty wrote:

Establishing a tradition means forgetting its origins, the aging Husserl used to say. Precisely because we owe so much to tradition, we are in no position to see just what belongs to it. With regard to a philosopher whose venture has awakened so many echoes, and at such an apparent distance from the point where he himself stood, any commemoration is also a betrayal — whether we do him the highly superfluous homage of our thoughts, as if we sought to gain them a wholly unmerited warrant, or whether on the contrary, with a respect that is not lacking in distance, we reduce him too strictly to what he himself desired and said.’