What do I bring to the problem of the same and the other? This: that the same be the other than the other, and identity difference of difference.
maurice Merleau-pontyquotes
1908 - 1961
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), French philosopher and professor, described his life as having two distinct phases. The first phase was his effort to restore the world of perception, so that the body was no longer viewed as merely an object or material entity. He illustrated his point in Phenomenology of Perception, which is considered one of his greatest contributions to technical philosophy. Perception, Merleau-Ponty claims, is not passive but a “creative receptivity.”
The second phase, as Merleau-Ponty stated, was an attempt to show that communication with others goes far beyond the realm of perception. He found empiricism and rationalism unsatisfactory philosophical traditions to describe his views on perception though, so he turned, for a time, toward social and political topics. He published numerous Marxists essays (Humanism and Terror) in defense of soviet communism.
After the Korean War however, his strong stance faltered and he viewed Marxism no longer as the final word, but simply as a model for understanding oneself and history. His disillusionment with Marxism led to a falling out with long-time friend, Jean-Paul Sartre.
As Merleau-Ponty was heavily influenced by both Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, he is often associated with the Existentialist movement, even though his later philosophies seem to take a turn from that theory. While not one of the most acclaimed philosophers of his day, Merleau-Ponty is considered a relevant and valuable resource to European philosophy, and his arguments are being given more attention now, especially within the cognitive sciences and medical ethics spheres of study.
We speak of ‘inspiration,’ and the word should be taken literally. There really is inspiration and expiration of Being.
What exists are not separated animals, but an inter-animality.
Nature gives us a dispersed finality. It is a demonology, full of supranatural forces, not one of which is supernatural. On this terrain of knowledge, one must be polytheist.
What resists phenomenology within us – natural being, the ‘barbarian’ source Schelling spoke of – cannot remain outside phenomenology. The philosopher must bear his shadow, which is not simply the factual absence of future light.
being / light / philosopher
Evolution, life, physis, appear here as enveloping with regard to ‘consciousness’ of human knowledge.
Philosophy: circles that include one another.
Nothingness is like the point of the stroboscopic spiral, which is who knows where, which is ‘nobody.
Moonlight and sunlight in our memory are presented before all else, not as sensory contents, but as a certain type of symbiosis, a certain manner that the outside has of invading us, a certain manner that we have of receiving it.
The generality of time, of a family of times, is derived from the fact that all these times are enveloped in a process of nature.