Merleau-Ponty (Arguments of the Philosophers)

321 Pages·1998·1.51 MB·English

by  Stephen Priest

MERLEAU-PONTY
The Arguments of the Philosophers
EDITOR: TED HONDERICH
Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic
University College London
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2nd Edition
*available in paperback
MERLEAU-PONTY
Stephen Priest
London and New York
First published 1998
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1998 Stephen Priest
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Priest, Stephen.
Merleau-Ponty/Stephen Priest.
p. cm.—(The arguments of the philosophers)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908–1961. I. Title. II. Series.
B2430.M3764P74 1998
194–dc21 97–50003

ISBN 0-203-41353-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-72177-2 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-06263-2 (Print Edition)
Contents
Preface viii
Abbreviations x
I LIFE AND WORKS 1
1 Student and intellectual 1
2 The Structure of Behaviour 2
3 The Phenomenology of Perception 5
4 Professor and man of letters 8
5 The Visible and the Invisible 9
II PHENOMENOLOGY 13
1 Existence and essence 13
2 The natural attitude and its suspension 18
3 Being-in-the-world 22
4 The critique of science 26
5 Phenomenological reflection 28
III EXISTENTIALISM 36
1 Hegel’s existentialism 37
2 Being and knowing 39
3 Being-towards-death 42
4 Merleau-Ponty and Sartre 46
5 The synthesis of being and nothingness 51
IV THE BODY 56
1 The body-subject 56
2 Being my body 57
3 Merleau-Ponty and the mind-body problem 66
4 The flesh of the world 72
5 Who looks into the mirror? 75
v
CONTENTS
V PERCEPTION 80
1 Perceiving wholes 80
2 Objectivity and points of view 83
3 Rationalism and empiricism 90
4 Sexuality and being-in-the-world 92
5 The possibility of intentionality 98
VI SPACE 101
1 The phenomenology of space 101
2 Subjective and objective space 105
3 Physical points of view 106
4 Spaces 113
5 Schneider’s problems 115
VII TIME 119
1 The phenomenology of time 119
2 Temporality 122
3 The supplement of time 131
4 The transcendence of time 134
5 Time constitutes itself 135
VIII SUBJECTIVITY 138
1 The cogito 138
2 Self-consciousness 142
3 The subject of consciousness 144
4 Immediacy 145
5 The trace 148
IX FREEDOM 150
1 Freedom and necessity 150
2 Self-determination 154
3 Compatibilism 159
4 The refutation of determinism 160
5 The dialectic of freedom 163
X LANGUAGE 166
1 The refutation of linguistic rationalism and empiricism 166
2 Thought and language 169
3 Expression 170
4 The phenomenology of language 172
5 Language and philosophy 175
6 Ineffability 176
vi
CONTENTS
XI OTHER MINDS 179
1 Self and other 179
2 The deferral of self-presence 181
3 The trace and the presentation of absence 185
4 The refutation of solipsism 191
5 I and other 194
XII THINGS 196
1 The essence of a physical object 196
2 Perspectival perception 198
3 Physical subjects and physical objects 201
XIII ART 204
1 Is painting a language? 204
2 Art and science 206
3 Painting and the body 207
XIV BEING 214
1 The meaning of being 214
2 The invisible 217
XV PAROUSIA
Existential Phenomenology and the Return
of Metaphysics 224
1 Subjectivity and the limits of science 226
2 Inside the soul 230
3 Spiritual space 234
4 Metaphysical time 235
5 What is it to be? 237
Notes 239
Bibliography 268
Index 305
vii
Preface
Even though logical positivism is officially defunct, Western philosophy
retains an optimistic faith in the procedures of the natural sciences to
solve problems that are really philosophical. This faith is nearly always
misplaced and Merleau-Ponty’s thought provides a most valuable
antidote to it. Merleau-Ponty shows us how to make room for human
subjectivity in a world of science.
At the time of writing, Anglo-American philosophy is still in the grip of
a putative distinction between something called ‘analytical philosophy’
and something else called ‘modern continental philosophy’. The
distinction does not withstand historical, geographical and philosophical
scrutiny. Despite the conspicuous methodological and stylistic distinctions
between phenomenology, existentialism, logical atomism, logical
positivism, linguistic analysis, structuralism, post-structuralism, herme-
neutics and others, all these movements operate (consciously or not)
within a fundamentally Kantian anti-metaphysical framework. Histori-
cally and geographically they are all German and Austrian in their
modern genesis.
On the other hand, there is a genuine and valuable distinction between
using logical arguments to try to solve philosophical problems and doing
anything else. In this book I have tried to show respect for Merleau-
Ponty’s work by arguing for and against what he says, even when he
provides no arguments of his own.
Merleau-Ponty is an existential-phenomenologist. In Chapter II, I
provide an understanding of his phenomenology and its derivation from
Husserl. In Chapter III, I provide an understanding of his existentialism
and its derivation from Hegel (whose patterns of thinking Merleau-
Ponty thinks he never escapes). In Chapters IV—XIV, I engage Merleau-
Ponty’s existential phenomenology with problems about the body,
perception, space, time, subjectivity, freedom, language, other minds,
physical objects, art and being. In the last chapter, in briefest outline, I
viii
PREFACE
sketch how we have to be even more subjectivist in our ontology than
Merleau-Ponty if we wish to solve these problems. The first chapter is
historical.
Most of this book was written during my period at Wolfson College
Oxford during 1993. I am most grateful to Dr T.D.J.Chappell for pro-
posing, and to Sir Isaiah Berlin for seconding, my election to a Visiting
Scholarship at Wolfson and to the Governing Body for that election.
I also thank the University of Rhode Island for my appointment as
Visiting Distinguished Professor during 1994 and the Rhode Island
Committee for the Humanities for their sponsorship. I am grateful to
Professor Cheryl Foster and Professor Galen Johnson of the University of
Rhode Island Philosophy Department for valuable discussion of Merleay-
Ponty’s ideas.
Dr T.D.J.Chappell and Professor Timothy Williamson kindly gave
their time to discuss the content of the manuscript. I thank Maeve
O’Donaghue, Anne Gerber and Eleanor Rivers for assistance with the
manuscript and Professor Ted Honderich and Peggy Priest for their
various kindnesses.
Stephen Priest
Department of Philosophy
University of Edinburgh
ix