Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective Phaenomenologica
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MERLEAU-PONTY IN CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE PHAENOMENOLOGICA COLLECTION FONDEE PAR H.L. VAN BREDA ET PUBLIEE SOUS LE PATRONAGE DES CENTRES D'ARCHIVES-HUSSERL 129 MERLEAU-PONTY IN CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE Edited by PATRICK BURKE and JAN VAN DER VEKEN Comite de redaction de la collection: President: S. IJsseling (Leuven) Membres: W. Marx (Freiburg i. Br.), J.N. Mohanty (Philadelphia), P. Ricreur (Paris), E. Straker (KOln), J. Taminiaux (Louvain-Ia-Neuve), Secretaire: J. Taminiaux MERLEAU-PONTY IN CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES Edited by PATRICK BURKE and lAN VAN DER VEKEN ..... SPRlNGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS" MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Merleau-Ponty in contemporary perspective! edited by Patrick Burke and Jan Van der Veken. p. cm. -- IPhaenomenologica ; v. 129) Papers presented at the internatIonal sympasium on Merleau-Ponty. held in Nov. 1991 by the Institute of Philosophy and the Husserl Archives at the Kathol ieke Universiteit te Leuven. rncludes bibl iographical references and index. ISBN 978·94·010-4768·5 ISBN 978·94·011·1751·7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978·94·011·1751·7 1. Merleau-Ponty. Maurice. 1908-1961--Congresses. r. Burke. Patrick. II. Veken. Jan van der. III. Series, Phaenomenologica 129. B2430.M3764M4695 1993 194--dc20 92-38343 ISBN 978-94-010-4768-5 printed an acid-free paper AII Rights Reserved © 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Oordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1993 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover lst edition 1993 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. To the memory of Joseph Van de Wiele and Louis Van Haecht Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix ABBREVIATIONS AND REFERENCES xi JAN VAN DER VEKEN / Preface xiii PATRICK BURKE / Introduction xvii PART I: INTERROGATION AND THINKING BERNHARD WALDENFELS / Interrogative Thinking: Reflections 3 on Merleau-Ponty's Later Philosophy BURKHARD LIEBSCH / Archeological Questioning: Merleau-Ponty 13 and Ricoeur FRAN<;OISE DASTUR / Merleau-Ponty and Thinking from Within 25 MARC RICHIR / Merleau-Ponty and the Question of Pheno- 37 menological Architectonics PART II: NATURE, THE UNCONSCIOUS, AND DESIRE RUDOLF BERNET / The Subject in Nature: Reflections on Merleau- 53 Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception M. C. DILLON / The Unconscious: Language and World 69 GALEN A. JOHNSON / Desire and Invisibility in "Eye and Mind": 85 Some Remarks on Merleau-Ponty's Spirituality vii viii T ABLE OF CONTENTS PART III: EXPRESSION, CREATION, AND INTERPRETATION EDWIN WEIHE / Merleau-Ponty's Doubt: The Wild of Nothing 99 RUDI VISKER / Raw Being and Violent Discourse: Foucault, 109 Merleau-Ponty and the (Dis-)Order of Things JAMES RISSER / Communication and the Prose of the World: The 131 Question of Language in Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer PART IV: POLITICS, ETHICS, AND ONTOLOGY STEPHEN WATSON / Merleau-Ponty, the Ethics of Ambiguity, and 147 the Dialectics of Virtue LAURA BOELLA / Phenomenology and Ontology: Hannah Arendt 171 and Maurice Merleau-Ponty PART V: EPILOGUE G. B. MADISON / Merleau-Ponty in Retrospect 183 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 197 NAME INDEX 201 Acknowledgements A significant debt of gratitude is owed to Professor Samuel IJsseling, Director of the Husserl-Archives at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven for his kind support and encouragement in bringing forth this volume in the Phaenomenologica series. Gestures of thanks and deep appreciation are offered to Ms. Ingrid Lombaerts and Mr. Steven Spileers for their professional assis tance in final manuscript preparation. Permission from Professor Marc Richir, co-editor of Merleau-Ponty, phenomenologie et experiences (Jerome Millon, 1992), to publish the English translations of the essays of Professors Bernet and Dastur is gratefully acknowledged. Words of gratitude are extended to the contributing authors and translators whose scholarship and expertise have made this collection possible, and in particular to Professors Boella, Dastur, and Richir for permission to publish their essays in English. ix Abbreviations and References Detailed references (edition, translator, publisher, date of publication, etc.) to the particular texts of Merleau-Ponty are given in each essay, usually on first mention of the text; thereafter, a standard form of shorter citation may be used, depending upon the author. For frequently cited works of Merleau Ponty, the following abbreviations are employed volume-wide, wherever an author has elected to use abbreviations. English AD Adventures of the Dialectic CR "Christianity and Ressentiment" EM "Eye and Mind" HT Humanism and Terror IPP In Praise of Philosophy PhP Phenomenology of Perception PNP "Philosophy and Non-Philosophy Since Hegel" PriP The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics PW The Prose of the World S Signs SB The Structure of Behavior SNS Sense and Non-Sense TLC Themes from the Lectures at the College de France 1952-1960 UP "An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His Work" VI The Visible and the Invisible French EP Eloge de la philosophie xi xii ABBREVIATIONS AND REFERENCES OE L'Oeil et L'esprit PP PhenomenoLogie de la perception PriP Le Primat de la perception et ses consequences philosophiques PM La Prose du monde RC Resumes de cours. College de France 1952-1960 S Signes SNS Sens et non-sens SO Merleau-Ponty it La Sorbonne - resume de cours 1949-1952 VI Le Visible et l'invisible JAN VAN DER VEKEN Preface Merleau-Ponty in contemporary perspective: this was the theme of the conference at the Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.L.) from 29 November to 1 December 1991. Thirty years after Merleau Ponty's untimely death, it seemed appropriate to bring together scholars from Europe and from the United States of America to reappraise his philosophy. In fact, a significant body of scholarship has emerged which would seem to attest to the continuing importance of his thought for a variety of disciplines within the humanities, the social sciences, and the philosophy of nature. In the present volume, Gary Brent Madison addresses the issue whether Merleau-Ponty can be considered to be a classical philosopher. The fact that his work is one of the highlights of the phenomenological tradition and is of continuing inspiration for researchers in various domains seems to justify that claim. Yet, it is the feeling of many of the contributors to this volume that the so-called "second Merleau-Ponty" is still not really known. The unfinished state of The Visible and the Invisible and the cryptic condition of many of the "Working Notes" may be responsible for that. More research should be done, to uncover "the unsaid" of Merleau-Ponty. lowe to a remark of Paul Ricoeur in his introduction to the work of G. B. Madison, La Phenomenologie de Merleau-Ponty. Une recherche des limites de la conscience (Paris, Klincksieck, 1973, p. 14) the insight that, in order to under stand the ontology of the "second" Merleau-Ponty, we should look to (the later) Schelling. In reading the Themes from the Lectures, one cannot help but to be impressed by the fact that Merleau-Ponty addresses now, in search for a new ontology, such unfathomable issues as The Concept of Nature. Should we talk about a serious shift in Merleau-Ponty's thought? The majority of the papers in this volume stresses the continuity rather than the discontinuity. The tone, however, of the way in which Merleau-Ponty addressed the main themes of philosophy had deepened. In preparing his candidature for the chair of philosophy at the College de France, Merleau-Ponty expressed his intention tq reconsider the whole of his philosophical enterprise in a more fundamental way: "reprendre toute la demarche philosophique en pensee fondamentale". It is my conviction that this "ontological turn", looking for xiv PREFACE the "Ineinander" of subject and object, is the real contribution of "Eye and Mind" and of The Visible and the Invisible. The papers of the conference and the Panel Discussion between Samuel IJsseling, Jacques Taminiaux and Jan Van der Veken on "Transcending Phenomenology?" tackled this issue. Merleau-Ponty was at the same time fully aware of the historicity and finitude of all philosophizing, and nevertheless he addresses in a new and searching way "the eternal problems of philosophy". The symposium was organized under the auspices of the Center of Metaphysics (K.U.L.), The Husserl-Archives, and the Merleau-Ponty Circle of North America. It was made possible with generous donations from the Joseph Van de Wiele Foundation, the National Foundation for Scientific Research (Belgium), the French Embassy in Belgium, and the Institute of Philosophy. The planning committee for the conference was comprised of John Patrick Burke from Seattle University in Washington, Jacques Taminiaux (Universite Catholique Louvain), Rudolf Bernet and Samuel IJsseling (Husserl-Archives), Galen Johnson (University of Rhode Island) and Jan Van der Veken (K.U.L.). The Institute of Philosophy owed this gesture of gratitude "after thirty years". Merleau-Ponty had a long association with Leuven and, most of all, with the founder of the Husserl-Archives and of this series, H. L. Van Breda, and with Alphonse De Waelhens, who wrote the introduction to his La struc ture du comportement and devoted an important book to his "philosophy of ambiguity". Van Breda's article on "Maurice Merleau-Ponty et les Archives Husserl a Louvain" (Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 67 (1962), pp. 410-430 has recently been translated into English and has appeared in Merleau-Ponty Vivant, edited by Martin Dillon (SUNY Press). Participants at the conference had a chance to examine a number of historical documents concerning Merleau-Ponty's relation to the Institute of Philosophy. These included the first editions of several books sent by Merleau Ponty to Herman Van Breda.