While Merleau-Ponty’s political positions evolved over the course of his career, they are grounded in and guided by a remarkably consistent account of historicity. Praxis requires authentic historical engagement; and Merleau-Ponty was critical of inauthentic a-historical approaches throughout his career. I chart a trajectory of Merleau-Ponty’s position from The War Has Taken Place (1945), through some of the newly published material from the mid to late 1940’s Michel Dalissier’s monumental two volume collection of inédits, and the Introduction to Signs (1960). (...) This results in two surprising and admittedly controversial observations that contradict dominant narratives. I argue that: (1) Merleau-Ponty’s account of historicity precludes the claim that he abandoned Marxism altogether with the writing of Adventures of the Dialectic (1955); and (2) Merleau-Ponty’s account of historicity reveals the dominant Western narrative about the war in Ukraine to be inauthentic. (shrink)

As considerações de Merleau-Ponty sobre a historicidade são significativas, tanto como um relato fenomenológico, quanto como um relato existencial de nossa situação histórica. Naturalmente, estes aspectos de seu trabalho não se excluem mutuamente, mas se entrelaçam. E cada aspecto contribui para o sentido da crise da historicidade humana. Primeiro consideraremos a crise fenomenológica da historicidade – ou seja, consideraremos a crise da historicidade fenomenologicamente. Esta é a tentativa de revelar as condições da possibilidade da história a partir da história ou (...) da estrutura de nossa situação histórica – onde a posição de Merleau-Ponty se afasta da fenomenologia husserliana. Em seguida, consideraremos a crise existencial de historicidade – ou seja, consideraremos a crise de historicidade existencialmente. Esta é a tentativa de compreender o imperativo de que as coisas são importantes para nós historicamente. Finalmente, vamos indicar brevemente a importância destes aspectos de nossa historicidade como um entrelaçamento crítico. Este entrelaçamento crítico revela a intrusão mútua do “como” e do “porquê” de nossa historicidade, que Merleau-Ponty descreve no final de sua carreira como uma existência chiasmática dentro da carne do mundo. O cruzamento crítico como interrogatório de nosso ser histórico fornece o “quem”, “o quê”, “quando” e “onde” de nossa historicidade. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty, in Humanism and Terror, addresses the spectrum of problems related to revolutionary action. His essay, Eye and Mind, is best known as a contribution to aesthetics. A common structure exists in these apparently disparate works. We must reject the illusion of subjective clairvoyance as a standard of revolutionary praxis; but also we must reject any idealised light of reason that illuminates all—that promises a history without shadows. The revolutionary nature of an act must be established as such through praxis. (...) The creative praxes of the political revolutionary or the revolutionary artist are recognised ex post facto; yet each involves the creation of its own new aesthetic wherein the value of that praxis is to be understood spontaneously and all at once. (shrink)

É com grande prazer que realizo este projeto. Não apenas por realizar um trabalho de um trabalho de amor para um amigo querido, Denis Guénoun, mas também por oferecer um presente para todos os anglófonos. Desde Sartre, não surgiu uma voz tão original no cenário francês. Guénoun escreve com autoridade em várias disciplinas, na grande tradição dos intelectuais franceses: filosofia, teatro, literatura, literatura de arte e literatura de arte; no entanto, ele escreve com a voz irreverente e poderosa irreverente e (...) poderosa necessária para chamar a atenção de especialistas em cada um desses campos. (shrink)

Robert Litman descreve quatro casos extraordinários em que indivíduos revelam esse conhecimento reprimido por meio da análise de sonhos após o suicídio do “outro”. Em cada caso, ocorre um momento de reconhecimento da significância do sonho tal que o sujeito se dá conta da culpabilidade. E, em cada caso, essa culpabilidade teve que ver com uma interrupção na comunicação que é revelada através da psicanálise. Quero desconstruir a relação transferência-contratransferência como uma reciprocidade simbiótica. Não ouso adiante, inalterado, quando transcendo quem (...) eu era através da língua com outros. A língua é a alteração da subjetividade. Ofereço uma crítica de certas compreensões de alteridade envolvidas em psicoterapia pelo exame da situação geral do encontro com outros por meio do evento-língua, peculiar à psicoterapia. Devo reconhecer que a ameaça da alteridade do paciente é também a promessa da minha habilidade em oferecer ajuda. Se consideramos seriamente a transcendência do evento-língua da terapia, vemos que o processo de alteração do outro implica mudanças para todos os envolvidos.Robert Litman describes four remarkable cases where individuals reveal this repressed knowledge through dream analysis after the suicide of the “other.” In each case, there comes a moment of recognition of the significance of the dream such that the subject realizes culpability. And in each case, this culpability had to do with a communication breakdown that is revealed through psychoanalysis. I want to deconstruct the transference / counter-transference relationship as a symbiotic reciprocity. I do not venture forth unchanged as I transcend who I was through language with others. Language is alteration of subjectivity. I offer a criticism of certain understandings of alterity involved in psychotherapy by examining the general situation of the encounter with others through the peculiar language-event of psychotherapy. I must recognize that the threat of the alterity of the patient is also the promise of my ability to offer help. If we take seriously the transcendence of the language-event of therapy, we see that the process of altering another involves changes for all involved. (shrink)

There is something uncanny about the importance of a place we call “home” given that is a designation fraught with apparent arbitrariness, ambiguity, and polysemy. We need to have a better understanding of home. This disproportionality between its designation and its importance reflects an existential rift: the importance of being at any particular place we call home is not designated a priori, permanent, intrinsically meaningful, or valuable yet no one would deny its importance in our experience. The value of being (...) at home is lived. The meaning and value of home are expressions of propriety that are neither capricious nor given as such: they are institutions in the sense that Maurice Merleau-Ponty used that term. Our identity emerges in the context of the institution of home. These elucidations use Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notion of institution to foreground some insights in the nature of home in the works of fiction and non-fiction by the Nobel Prize-winning writer, Toni Morrison. Her literary work, intimately grounded in lived experience, as well as her critical insights, will help us understand what sets the institution of home apart from other institutions is its orienting propriety. (shrink)

Comparo o poeta Charles Baudelaire e o filósofo Maurice Merleau-Ponty como críticos sociais da modernidade a partir do interior da sociedade moderna. Exploro a influência não reconhecida de Baudelaire sobre Merleau-Ponty como uma forma de reler a fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty. Também examino a poesia de Baudelaire assim como seu ensaio “O pintor da vida moderna”. Embora o ensaio afirme ser uma análise da importância do pintor C. Guys, sustento que pode ser lido como autobiográfico - revelando uma consciência do poeta (...) enquanto crítico social da modernidade. Da mesma maneira, as caracterizações de artistas feitas por Merleau-Ponty revelam muito sobre a sua visão do papel do filósofo como crítico social. Pode-se ler a fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty como uma arte em vez de como uma ciência das ciências. Finalmente, exploro as implicações políticas dessa fenomenologia baseada na estética. Sustento que há uma profundidade histórica revelada por essa arte fenomenológica do julgamento político que seria negligenciada por qualquer ciência política.I compare poet Charles Baudelaire and philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty as social critics of modernity from within modern society. I explore Baudelaire’s unacknowledged influence upon Merleau-Ponty as a means of re-reading Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. I examine Baudelaire’s poetry as well as his essay, The Painter of Modern Life. Though the essay claims to be an analysis of the significance of the painter C. Guys, I argue that it can be read as autobiographical - revealing a sense of the poet as social critic of modernity. Likewise, Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of artists reveal a great deal about his own view of the role of the philosopher as social critic. One can read Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology as an art rather than as a science of sciences. Finally, I explore the political implications of this aesthetic-based phenomenology. I argue that there is an historical depth revealed by this phenomenological art of political judgment that would be neglected by any political science. (shrink)

This dissertation is concerned with the ethical nature of language. Contrary to most post-modern and post-structuralist accounts, I argue that a thoughtful examination of the intersubjective relations of interlocutors can be accomplished without unduly privileging the subject, and can open new paths of inquiry into the ethical bonds of the human situation. ;I begin from the existential-phenomenological perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty's notion of the self engaged with others in speaking, writing, and gesturing developed continuously over the course of his (...) writings. But this account is one which must be gathered piecemeal from his diverse written works, which range in topic through psychology, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and many others. In the first part of the dissertation, I provide a thematic exegesis of these passages collected from the earliest and latest periods of his work. ;In the second part, I argue that the notion of the self which emerges from part one provides a fruitful starting point for reflection in the domain of ethics. Contrary to thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, and Baudrillard, I contend that the individual engaged in language is best thought of as communicating subjectivity; and this subjectivity is already predisposed toward intersubjective communion. ;Next, I expand upon the work of Calvin O. Schrag. There is an ideality which is manifest in communicative praxis which points toward a radicalized understanding of responsibility, and which undergirds the proper critical standpoint for ethical as well as social philosophy. This can be achieved, I argue, only by rethinking the traditional notions of universality, particularity, and transcendence inherited from our Kantian practical tradition. ;Finally, I show that this notion of responsibility must emerge as distinct from a transcendental posture assumed by thinkers like Apel and Habermas, a volitional posture like Sartre's, or any traditional posture based upon a faculty psychology. The communion of communicative praxis is best understood from an existential-ontological inquiry standpoint, and is defined as care. Responsibility for thoughtful discriminations and discernment within the human ethical and social situation is shown to be an issue due to, and not in spite of, corporeality. (shrink)

This book originally appeared in 1998 and recently has been reissued in paperback form. It appears in the Arguments of the Philosophers series at Routledge.