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Essay
A Merleau-Pontian Response to Steven Pinker: Reason and Data
University of West Florida Libraries
03/2022
Abstract
In this essay I will offer a response to a Ted Talk delivered by Steven Pinker (with some reference to his scholarly publications) from the point of view of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. In this Ted Talk, Pinker lauds the use of Age of Enlightenment reason and the exercise of sympathy to solve human problems. It is well-known that Merleau-Ponty is critical of Western intellectual tradition (which includes the Enlightenment and its progeny philosophical Modernism), but it is also known that he does not completely break with the philosophical tradition that seeks rational explanations and that values the contributions of science. In addition, insofar as he develops an ethics, sympathy, empathy, and the recognition of the human other plays an important part in it. We will thus see that Merleau-Ponty’s point view has some things in common with Pinker’s but that it also disagrees with it, for Merleau-Ponty criticizes Enlightenment, Modernist rationality while Pinker seems to fully embrace it.
Details
- Title
- A Merleau-Pontian Response to Steven Pinker
- Resource Type
- Essay
- Publisher
- University of West Florida Libraries
- Format
- pdf
- Number of pages
- 31
- Copyright
- © copyright March 2022
- Identifiers
- 99380173195706600
- Academic Unit
- University of West Florida Libraries
- Language
- English