This paper takes up the question as to what has primacy within Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology as a way to provide insight into the relation between empirical science and transcendental philosophy within his account of embodiment. Contending that this primacy necessarily pertains to methodology, I show how Kurt Goldstein’s conception of biology provided Merleau-Ponty with a scientific model for approaching human existence holistically in which primacy pertains to the transcendental practice of productive imagination that generates the eidetic organismic Gestalt in terms (...) of which sense is made of empirical facts. Considering the analogous role played by imagination in Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual synthesis in the form of what he called projection, I argue that his account of embodiment is, parallel to Goldstein, grounded methodologically on the projection of an organismic Gestalt, and that as a form of operative-intentional praxis projection is the site of primacy in his phenomenology overall. In terms of the relation between natural science and transcendental philosophy in Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment, while the theoretical dimension of the latter—the eidetic apriority of the organismic Gestalt—is coupled dialectically with empirical facts on an epistemically coeval basis, these are jointly subordinated to the normative commitments implied by the imaginative projection of that Gestalt. The primacy of the latter is transcendental but in a distinctly practical sense, such that any substantive discrepancy between natural science and Merleau-Pontian phenomenology reflects metaphilosophical, not theoretical, disagreement. (shrink)

This paper clarifies the relationship between Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation with regard to ‘the idea of a transcendental theory of method’. Although Fink’s text played a singularly important role in the development of Merleau-Ponty’s postwar thought, contrary to recent claims made by Ronald Bruzina this influence was not positive. Reconstructing the basic methodological claims of each text, in particular with regard to the being of the phenomenologist, the nature of the productivity that makes phenomenology possible, (...) and the problem of methodological self-reference, I show that Phenomenology of Perception is premised on a decisive rejection of the main theses affirmed in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation. In contrast to Fink’s speculative reinterpretation of phenomenology as an absolute science, Merleau-Ponty viewed it as participating in the historical realization of the world, and hence as ultimately based on a practical faith. Albeit with a Marxian inflection, Merleau-Ponty thus related phenomenology much more closely to Kant. This may not be a better philosophical position, but circa 1945 it was Merleau-Ponty’s, whose work must be approached accordingly. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation of Gestalt theory in The Structure of Behavior is central to his entire corpus. Yet commentators exhibit little agreement about what lesson is to be learned from his critique, and provide little exegesis of how his argument proceeds. I fill this exegetical gap. I show that the Gestaltist’s fundamental error is to reify forms as transcendent realities, rather than treating them as phenomena of perceptual consciousness. From this, reductivist errors follow. The essay serves not only as a helpful (...) guide through parts of The Structure of Behavior for newcomers, but also offers a corrective to recent trends in philosophy of mind. Such influential commentators as Hubert Dreyfus, Taylor Carmen, and Evan Thompson have, I argue, risked serious misunderstanding of Merleau-Ponty’s view, by mistakenly treating “circular causality” as central to Merleau-Ponty’s own acausal view of forms. -/- [The version archived at Philpapers is closer to the author's preferred format. Formatting requirements in the published version make the section/subsection hierarchy needlessly difficult to follow. There are some changes to content in the published version. Please cite only the published version.]. (shrink)

Resumen: El artículo pretende realizar una confrontación entre el modelo fenomenológico de Merleau-Ponty y la propuesta deconstructiva de Derrida acerca del tema del lenguaje y de la problemática genética. En Merleau-Ponty, la cuestión genética se vincula a la noción de cuerpo y a la expresividad precategorial de los gestos, en los que el silencio describe una dimensión opaca e inalcanzable temáticamente, pero originaria y decisiva para la mirada fenomenológica. Por otra parte, Derrida es un crítico muy radical de todo uso (...) filosófico de un origen pleno, y por lo tanto también de la proyección de un silencio primitivo pretendida por Merleau-Ponty. Sin embargo, la noción de silencio de Merleau-Ponty no cumple cabalmente la función que Derrida le asigna, siendo siempre para Merleau-Ponty un espacio diacrónico y diferencial. El texto que sigue pretende mostrar los puntos de contactos y de distancias entre Merleau-Ponty y Derrida con respecto al tema del lenguaje en general, haciendo también hincapié sobre la cuestión de la literatura, a la que ambos filósofos se dedican ampliamente y a la que ambos pretenden extender las cuestiones evocadas, con el objeto de demostrar que en este ámbito los motivos de oposición entre los dos planteamientos se hacen efímeros.: This article aims to realize a confrontation between Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological model and Derrida's deconstructive proposal, with regard to the subject of language and the genetic problematic. In Merleau-Ponty, the genetic question is linked to the notion of the body and the pre-categorial expressiveness of gestures, in which silence describes a dimension that is opaque and thematically unattainable, but original and decisive for the phenomenological viewpoint. Derrida, in contrast, is a radical critic of the philosophical use of such origin, and therefore also of the projection to a primitive silence sought by Merleau-Ponty. However, the notion of silence in Merleau-Ponty does not fully meet fully the role assigned to it by Derrida, silence being always for Merleau-Ponty a diachronic and differential space. This article aims to show the points in common and the differences between Merleau-Ponty and Derrida on the issue of language in general. Also discussed is the topic of literature, with which both philosophers are widely engaged and to which both try to extend the issues under consideration in this paper. It is argued that in this area the motives behind the opposition between the two approaches become ephemeral. (shrink)

This article studies the phenomenology of chronic illness in light of phenomenology’s insights into ecstatic temporality and freedom. It shows how a chronic illness can, in lived experience, manifest itself as a disturbance of our usual relation to ecstatic temporality and thence as a disturbance of freedom. This suggests that ecstatic temporality is related to another sort of time—“provisional time”—that is in turn rooted in the body. The article draws on Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Heidegger’s Being and Time , (...) shedding light on the latter’s concept of ecstatic temporality. It also discusses implications for self-management of chronic illness, especially in children. (shrink)

El presente trabajo aborda el tratamiento del “caso Schneider” que MerleauPonty lleva adelante a partir de los análisis neuropsiquiátricos de K. Goldstein. Esto se conecta directamente con el problema del status que adquiere el discurso científico en un modelo que adopta como marco la fenomenología. Mostraremos que este recurso, lejos de implicar un alejamiento de este modelo teórico, constituye un caso de reducción a la experiencia de sujetos cuyo “arco intencional” se presenta distendido y están, por ello, en condiciones de (...) ofrecer datos equiparables a los que se obtienen al amparo de la reducción fenomenológica.This paper addresses the treatment of the Schneider’s case that Merleau-Ponty accomplished from the neuropsychiatric analysis of K. Goldstein. This issue is directly connected with the problema of the status of scientific discourse into a model that adopts a phenomenological framework. It will be shown that this resource, far from implying a departure from this theoretical model, is a case of reduction to the experience of subjects whose “intentional arch” appears relaxed and are therefore able to provide data comparable to those obtained under phenomenological reduction. (shrink)

This thesis is about meaning, expression and language in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and their role in the phenomenological project as a whole. For Merleau-Ponty, expression is the taking up of a meaning given either in perception or in already acquired forms of expression, thereby repeating, transforming or congealing meaning into gestures, utterances, artworks, ideas or theories. Contrary to the predominant view in the literature, the relation of expression to meaning, and in particular the problem of expressing new meanings, was of fundamental (...) importance to Merleau-Ponty from the very beginning, in that it was intrinsically related to the overcoming of what he termed “objective thought”. Admittedly, there is an evolution of his philosophy in this respect: from the early stance where the recasting of certain basic categories is taken as pivotal for the development of a new form of thinking, with arguments drawn also from various empirical and social sciences, to what appears to be an effort at an all-pervading reformulation of philosophical language during his last years. But the remoulding of categories was never for Merleau-Ponty a matter simply of finding a few, better adapted concepts, but from the outset an endeavour to think philosophical arguments through to a point where they reveal their inherent inconsistencies. Recasting philosophical expression is thus a risky enterprise, and this is a point I explore further in Essay 1, that focuses especially upon creative expression in painting and to some extent in literature. In Essay 2 I discuss the notion of Gestalt and how it serves this general project, whereas Essay 3 deals with verbal language, on the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Saussure’s linguistics. Essay 4 examines bodily expression from the point of view of feminist phenomenology and in particular Judith Butler’s early reading of Merleau-Ponty, and finally Essay 5 discusses expression in the art of dance. (shrink)

This study attempts to make explicit the importance of the French philosopher and epistemologist Leon Brunschvicg as antecedent and preparation for the reception of phenomenology in France. The proximity of this author with some representatives thinkers of French epistemology, who are associated to Husserl –Koyré and Cavillès– and with other French phenomenologists –Lévinas and Merleau-Ponty– makes him a key piece in the development of the phenomenological tradition. Finally, we will try to highlight the points of communication between the philosophies of (...) Brunschvicg and Husserl. (shrink)