The primary concem of this essay is the similarity and difference between Merleau-Ponty’s early (Phenomenology of Perception) and late (The Visible and the lnvisible) philosophy of language. While some argue that Merleau-Ponty’s late work breaks with the earlier text and foreshadows poststructuralist and deconstructionist philosophy of language, I argue (with others) that there is no significant break in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. The similarities discovered between the early and late philosophy of language are 1.) that the body opens onto a world that (...) is shared by all, 2.) that human gestures (of an individual and between individuals) interpenetrate and aim at the same world, and 3.) that the visual field that is already structured by the body/world interaction provides the basis for more abstract linguistic expression. The most fundamental difference discovered between these texts is that Merleau-Ponty abandons his earlier concept of the tacit cogito for the reflexivity of the body. Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to relate this reflexivity to language will also be discussed.Since there is such confusion and debate about the continuity of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, especially with respect to his philosophy of language, I have cast the essay in the form of a comprehensive exposition. The detailed textual exposition serves two purposes. First, it provides a comprehensive essay length introduction to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language, and secondly, it reveals Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts in his own words, thus reducing the possibility of misinterpretation. (shrink)

The main goal of this essay is to bring the works of Merleau-Ponty to bear on the liberal/communitarian debate. His works antedate and in many ways anticipate the themes currently being raised by this debate. I hope to show that Merleau-Ponty comes between liberalism and communitarianism. On the one hand, he supports liberalism’s claim about the importance of individual rights, yet on the other hand, he supports communitarianism by claiming that without certain social and political communities, to which we owe (...) allegiance, these rights would be non-existent. (shrink)

I attempt to present Merleau-Ponty here as one of the West’s first multiculturalists. He developed his characteristically balanced position some forty to fifty years ago, and he managed to do so without completely abandoning Western claims of rational justification. What he does abandon is a preestablished reason and its claim to absolute certainty. For Merleau-Ponty, rationality always remains to be established and always remains partial and incomplete. Yet his position does not fall into the skepticism and relativism of most of (...) the postmodernist philosophies that have developed since his death in 1961, that have developed without a full appreciation of the explanatory power of his writings. (shrink)

In the book's preface, Low writes: <p" am fully aware that every exposition is an interpretation, and i believe that merleau-ponty was surely aware of this as ...

Our work represents the culmination of a study that is a search for a method. It is a search that has led us away from the remnants of Cartesianism that are found in Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, which we do not deal with here, and toward a comparative study of Karl Marx and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which we do take up in detail. The present manuscript argues, in fact, that both Marx and Merleau-Ponty operate with a method that may be (...) called an existential dialectic.By means of careful and extended analysis of The Structure of Behavior we attempt to uncover Merleau-Ponty’s method, calling special attention to its sometimes ignored dialectical character. We then proceed to argue that Marx is operating with a type of phenomenological/existential method, and this is true not only of the young Marx but also of the mature Marx of the Grundrisse and Capital. Finally, with the assistance of Lukacs’ History and Class Consciousness, we point up the dialectical character of Marx’s method. Thus, it is by uncovering this approach in the text of each of these thinkers and by comparing the method of each man with that of the other that we show that both Marx and Merleau-Pontyoperate with an existential dialectical method.This in depth methodological comparison of Marx and Merleau-Ponty represents the first study of its kind. It is hoped that “The Existential Dialectic of Marx and Merleau-Ponty” will contribute to the on-going and important dialogue between Marxists and existentialists. (shrink)

This essay attempts to counter the claim that there is a significant shift or even a break in the body of Merleau-Ponty’s work, one that dramatically moves from a focus on perception to a focus on language. This break proves to be untenable for the following reasons: The early studies of perception do not disregard the importance of language. The later studies of language do not disregard perception and are purposely taken up to help more fully enlighten the importance of (...) the earlier works. The relatively recent appearance of Merleau-Ponty’s later Nature reveals that the author returns to earlier ontological studies in order to develop them more fully, and that he does so, in part, to more fully understand the emergence of human perception and its connection to language. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide detailed evidence for Charles Taylor’s claim that both Hegel and Merleau-Ponty follow Kant’s refutation of idealism in an effort to take a stand against Modernism’s claim that human knowledge of the world is reducible to a conceptual representation of it. For both the Hegel of Phenomenology of Mind and Merleau-Ponty throughout his career, human consciousness and knowledge must embrace and make sense of a world that is always already there. This stand will be made against (...) Postmodernism as well. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre develops perhaps the most radical view of individual freedom in the entire history of Western philosophy. The subject is free to create all meaning and to interpret the world, society, and self in anyway he or she wishes. The structuralist and postmodernist philosophies that succeeded Sartre’s philosophy in France and elsewhere rejected this view and put in its place linguistic and social structures that frame all human meaning, including the meaning that the subject experiences with respect to him (...) or herself. It is the characteristically balanced thought of Merleau-Ponty that comes between these extremes and in fact integrates them, that integrates self and society, perception and language, and even human consciousness, the body, and the world—as this essay will attempt to show. (shrink)

“Merleau-Ponty’s Corpus” attempts to answer the following question: How is it possible for us today to develop a viable political theory and practice without Modernist epistemological foundations? The answer to this question is sought in the body of Merleau-Ponty’s work, in the balance of a philosophy that comes between Modernism and Postmodernism, in a body of work that must be regarded as continuous and not as fragmented into distinct periods that focus first on perception, then on language, and finally on (...) politics. (shrink)

In this paper I will provide a brief summary of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy as it is relevant to the concept of reason. Merleau-Ponty’s position comes between the two now dominant views of reason: the traditional view that relies on principles of rationality (identity and noncontradiction) that are supposedly preexistent, either in a realm of ideas or in nature in itself, and the postmodem/deconstructionist view that claims that language is a system of differences with no positive terms, that the concepts of identity (...) and presence are simply a creation of a “deferring” language. For Merleau-Ponty the principle of identity (presence) is neither pregiven nor an arbitrary creation of language but has its roots in a bodily blending of lived perceptual perspectives, of the individual’s within his or her won body and of the individual’s with the perspectives of others. Merleau-Ponty’s thesis thus allows us to escape the traditional error of accepting principles of reason as absolute and pregiven, for the blending of perspectives always remains to be accomplished, and it allows us to avoid the postmodemist claim that the principles of rationality are simply a creation of language, for in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, language is a sublimation of the body’s openness unto the world and others. (shrink)

Few writers' unfinished works are considered among their most important, but such is the case with Merleau-Ponty's _The Visible and the Invisible_. What exists of it is a mere beginning, yet it bridged modernism and postmodernism in philosophy. Low uses material from some of Merleau-Ponty's later works as the basis for completion. Working from this material and the philosopher's own outline, Low presents how this important work would have looked had Merleau-Ponty lived to complete it.

“Merleau-Ponty on Causality” attempts to reveal Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of causality with respect to the physical, the vital, and the human. The philosophy of causality of both Hume and Mill will be briefly addressed and challenged. Special attention will be paid to Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of causality with respect to human behavior.

It is frequently remarked that Merleau-Ponty did not write about race, gender, or anti-Semitism. Overall, this is true, but the relatively recent re-publication of his Sorbonne lectures, along with some new materials, shows that his lectures did address the issues of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism. In addition, Emily Lee’s framing of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the human body provides a useful way to understand its relationship to race and gender. While humans are fundamentally the same biologically, “secondary biological characteristics” such as (...) skin color, situated in various social contexts, have a significant impact on the formation of one’s personal and social identity. What I seek to do here is find in Merleau-Ponty’s work the philosophical roots of Lee’s claim. I also seek to find the moral recognition of the other in Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of time and how his treatment of time relates to the two-dimensionality of the human body. It is this treatment that allows us to recognize the sameness of the other but that also allows us to recognize and respect differences. (shrink)

With the advent of new technology and imaging techniques that measure brain activity and with the development of the computer as a model for human thinking, it is not surprising to find many authors currently addressing issues regarding brain function and themind/body problem. What is perhaps surprising, given the absence of these techniques at the time, is that Merleau-Ponty addresses these same issues with a rigor and insight that equals, and perhaps even exceeds, most current philosophical studies. Merleau-Ponty’s frequently ignored (...) early work, The Structure of Behavior, contains a wealth of analysis still relevant to current biological and neurophysiological studies and to the philosophical consequences frequently drawn from them. Merleau-Ponty critically addresses not only theories that attempt to understand human behavior as the linear calculation of discrete physiological events but also theories that would explain human behavior simply by appealing to abstract conceptual analysis. His theory of emergent materialism focuses on the human body as a concrete organic whole that can be reduced neither to linear physical events nor to abstract conceptual relations. Understanding the human being requires a theory that recognizes the human body as an original whole, that is, that recognizes a body that intimately integrates mind and matter. It is this theory that Merleau-Ponty first articulates in The Structure of Behavior. It is the main themes of this theory that I will attempt to reveal here. (shrink)