Abstract
It is one of Jacques Derrida’s later texts, Le Toucher—Jean-Luc Nancy, wherein one finds his most sustained commentary on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I argue that Derrida’s criticisms of Merleau-Ponty in this text conceal a significant proximity between his own elaboration of sensibility and that of Merleau-Ponty. Their respective accounts of sensibility are similar in two respects. Firstly, for them both, sensibility is born of a parsing of the self in a hiatus or interval that disrupts the movement of auto-affection. The self can only be known as such through this exposure to alterity. Secondly, this exposure and opening is in no way normative for either thinker, which is to say that their accounts of sensibility are similar not only in structure but also insofar as sensibility for them both is a non-normative opening to ethics; it is an elaboration of embodiment that provokes the question of response but no definitive or prescriptive answer. Hence the structure of sensibility begs the question of ethics, and the problem of response, but can provide little by way of a normative ethics.
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Notes
Derrida (2005, p. 211/238).
As Reynolds notes, Derrida’s commentary on Merleau-Ponty is sparse prior to the publication of Memoirs for the Blind (Derrida 1993), and even here, Derrida’s remarks are notably brief.
Merleau-Ponty’s own elaboration of alterity does not rest easily with the Levinasian descriptions of this relation, wherein one is besieged by the other, dispossessed by the other, in a way that commands one’s obedience to certain ethical (and theological) absolutes. While both would agree that alterity animates sensibility, Merleau-Ponty would not subscribe to the theological bent of Levinas’s commandments for non-violence.
Derrida (2005, p. 160/184).
Derrida (2005, p. 172/197).
Derrida (2005, p. 161/186).
ibid.
Derrida (2005, p. 162/186).
Husserl (1989, p. 155).
Derrida (2005, p. 172/197).
Derrida (2005, p. 175/200).
Derrida (2005, p. 177/202).
Derrida (2005, p. 179/205).
Derrida (2005, p. 179/206).
Derrida (2005, p. 181/207).
Derrida (2005, p. 180/206).
Derrida (2005, p. 181/207).
Derrida (2005, p. 188/215).
Derrida (2005, p. 195/221).
Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 175/221).
Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 174/220).
Derrida (2005, p. 191/218).
Derrida claims that Nancy would never have fallen prey to this “confusion” of self and other of which Merleau-Ponty stands accused. Nancy would never have claimed that “other and my body are born together from the same original ecstasy” Derrida (2005, p. 195).
Derrida (2005, p. 198/224).
Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 174/220).
Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 142/185).
Derrida (2005, p. 211/238).
Merleau-Ponty (1968).
Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 135/176).
Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 135/176).
See Butler (2006).
Merleau-Ponty (1968, p. 147/191).
For a discussion of the mechanism of discrimination in Derrida, see Hägglund (2004), where he argues for a constitutive violence that is requisite for the emergence of identity, one that is not derivative of a primary peace as it is in the work of Emmanuel Levinas.
Lawlor (2006).
Derrida (1978).
Derrida (1999, p. 117).
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Acknowledgments
Material included in this essay was presented at two consecutive meetings of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle in Memphis, Tennessee (2007) and Toronto, Canada (2008). I am grateful to the audiences in both venues for feedback that informed the evolution of this essay.
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Murphy, A.V. “All things considered:” sensibility and ethics in the later Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. Cont Philos Rev 42, 435–447 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-009-9116-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-009-9116-y