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.

We should revisit Merleau-Ponty’s late essay “From Mauss to Levi-Strauss,” for it is still well worth reading, especially since it provides a viable way between the extremes of modernism and postmodernism. The essay/chapter explicitly challenges modernism, embraces a structural, dialectical approach, but does not go as far as many postmodernists who (after Merleau-Ponty’s untimely death in 1961) “run” with structural themes as fast and as far as they can go. The balance of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy remains one of its most attractive qualities, for his balanced explanations often provide greater clarity than his more extreme competitors.

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.