Abstract

This dissertation describes Merleau-Ponty's final view of phenomenology by following the theme of ideality through the itinerary of his thought. As is standard, I divide his career into three periods. Unlike most interpretations, however, I argue that the middle period is crucial for understanding the overall itinerary of his thought and provides the proper orientation by which Merleau-Ponty's ultimate claims about phenomenology can be adjudicated. ;In the first chapter, I examine the problem of ideality in Husserl's work. Originally motivated by the threat of relativism, Husserl's work was polarized by questions of ideality. In the second chapter, I describe Merleau Ponty's early account of ideality, which arises from his attempt to articulate a new transcendental aesthetic. In the early period, rational idealities are based on pre-predicative, perceptual experience understood in terms of the phenomenological concept of Fundierung. This account of ideality is incomplete, for it fails to account for higher-order idealities and the historical constitution of language. ;In the middle period, which I describe in Chapters Three, Four, and Five, Merleau-Ponty directly addresses these shortcomings by focusing on an account of intersubjective ideal structures and constitution, especially the historical constitution of language. Outlining the possiblity of novel expression is crucial to the middle-period account of language because with it Merleau-Ponty seeks to overcome a persistent problem in phenomenology, namely, the difficulty of rendering ordinary language transcendentally appropriate. Thus, Merleau-Ponty's middle period account of novel expression is nothing less than a re-writing of the transcendental moment. It also provides an alternative account of ideality, one based on the phenomenological concept of Stiftung. Ideality is now understood in terms of a diacritical development, internal to language itself, of a never-fully recoverable origin. The middle period represents a crucial extension of the early period and a transformation of Merleau-Ponty's understanding of phenomenology away from investigations into egological perceptual experience towards an active, intersubjective engagement with our philosophic tradition. ;In the final chapter, I indicate the influence of the middle period on Merleau-Ponty's late thought, particularly on many of the innovative concepts in the Visible and Invisible and describe his late account of ideality, phenomenology, and historical rationality.