Dr. Douglas Low

Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty each consider what was taken to be the decline of Western thought. The works of Husserl and Heidegger will be briefly considered, along with Merleau-Ponty’s evaluation of his two great predecessors, while Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy will be featured here in some detail. The case will be made that Merleau-Ponty challenges the veracity of Western thought but finds in it the seeds of a new form of rationality. What Merleau-Ponty regards as a rationality that focused exclusively on abstract rational principles to the extent that specific circumstances were ignored is rejected for a new form of rationality, one that is rooted in the body’s perceptual engagement with the world. How Merleau-Ponty defines this new form of rationality will be explored.

Somewhat surprisingly, a number of scholars have recently claimed to find an implied theology in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. This surprising because the author does not state anywhere in the body of his work that he seeks to align his philosophy with a theology, in fact he states just the opposite, as we shall see. While it is true that Merleau-Ponty does dialogue with certain views of Christianity, and while it is true that he does argue for a religion that treats the divine as “horizontal” rather than “vertical,” that is, as part of human life rather than beyond it, the sympathetic goal of his reflection here is to suggest a Christianity that is more humane and less dogmatically hierarchical, that is more centered in human experience rather than an absolute other. His goal here is certainly not to claim this theology as an essential part of his philosophy. As he says, the role of the philosopher should not be to prove or disprove the existence of God but to consider what God means to human beings in the movement of history. A number of Merleau-Ponty’s own texts will be consider here in some detail along with a variety of texts that claim that his works harbor a hidden theology.

Merleau-Ponty’s late lecture course on Heidegger is primarily concerned with probing the possibility of a phenomenological ontology. Merleau-Ponty’s lectures provide a rather straightforward presentation of Heidegger’s later thought, without elaborate commentary or criticism. However, Merleau-Ponty does favor Heidegger’s later move toward an indirect expression of Being but does not think that he consistently maintains this view. By the time that we reach the end of Merleau-Ponty’s lecture course, we begin to see a number of differences between the two philosophers come into play, with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy solving more problems than that of his German counterpart.

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 (and gender), 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.

"Further Considerations of Alienation" attempts to expand upon an earlier essay entitled "Merleau-Ponty and a Reconsideration of Alienation." From the point of view of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, this new essay considers modernist rationality and the postmodernist free play of language as forms of alienation. The essay attempts to show that Merleau-Ponty joins the company of Marx, Lukács. Habermas and Heidegger in order to make this case.

Ralph Perry argues that value emerges with life, i.e., with sentients and the desire to survive, and that morality, properly speaking, emerges when sentient life forms recognize each other in a common environment. David Hume reminds us that traditionally there have been two primary sources for ethical claims, basically pleasure and reason, and proceeds to offer a third, the association of approval or disapproval, which is based on sympathy for the other, with certain observed behaviors toward others. We will see that Merleau-Ponty makes use of all the above, of sentience, of sympathy for and recognition of others, and of an open rationality that is to be provisionally established in a non-coercive dialog with others. At least implied in his philosophy, then, is the belief that value begins with life and sentience, with the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, and with the interest to survive, while morality begins with the capacity to sympathize and empathize with other humans (and even other non-human species), and with the ability to dialogue with others in order to establish what is fair for all. Generally, then, ethical values, are rooted in life, sentience, and the capacity for an open dialog with others, which are rooted in, are a part of, and which emerge from nature and the complex ontology of the human body---which will be explored in some detail. A number of Derrida’s criticisms of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy will also be considered and challenged.