The Temporality of Life: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the Immemorial Past
Southern Journal of Philosophy 45 (2):177-206 (2007)
| Abstract | Borrowing conceptual tools from Bergson, this essay asks after the shift in the temporality of life from Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception to his later works. Although the Phénoménologie conceives life in terms of the field of presence of bodily action, later texts point to a life of invisible and immemorial dimensionality. By reconsidering Bergson, but also thereby revising his reading of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty develops a non-serial theory of time in the later works, one that acknowledges the verticality and irreducibility of the past. Life in the flesh relies on unconsciousness or forgetting, on an invisibility that structures its passage. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Merleau-Ponty Bergson life time past unconsciousness | |||||||||
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Alia Al-Saji (2007). The Temporality of Life: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the Immemorial Past. Southern Journal of Philosophy 45 (2):177-206.
Alia Al-Saji (2007). The Temporality of Life. Southern Journal of Philosophy 45 (2):177-206.
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