A regime which is nominally liberal can be oppressive in reality. A regime which acknowledges its violence might have in it more genuine humanity.
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.
There is not identity, nor non-identity, or non-coincidence, there is inside and outside turning about one another.
There is no more individuated being in the system. We only ever have to deal with families of trajectories.
There is a kinship between the concepts of nature and radical contingency.
The doctrine cannot receive minorities, but neither can it reject them, because minorities are the salt of the Earth!
Esthesiological body and erotic body in a relation of intercorporeality in the biosphere with all animality and by introjection & projection.
It would then be found that the words, vowels, and phonemes are so many ways of ‘singing’ the world. The initial form of language, therefore, would have been a kind of song.
There is no universal clock, but local histories take form beneath our eyes, and begin to regulate themselves, and haltingly are linked to one another and demand to live, and confirm the powerful in the wisdom which the immensity of the risks and the consciousness of their own disorder had given them. The world is more present to itself in all its parts than it ever was.
The unfurling of the animal is like a pure wake that is related to no boat.
It is the unconscious which chooses what aspect of us will be admitted to official existence.