Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Merleau-Ponty by Taylor Carman Merleau-Ponty by Taylor Carman. Philosophy Professor Barnard College Columbia University. Contact. Department of Philosophy Barnard College 3009 Broadway New York, NY 10027. Shout into the abyss. Praise for the First Edition : 'Carman gives a fresh, clear, and convincing account of Merleau-Ponty's thought. His book is the best available thus far and should be required reading for those interested in Merleau-Ponty's original and important ideas and how they relate both to our pervasive perceptual experience and to current philosophical debate.' - Hubert Dreyfus, University of California, Berkeley, USA. 'This is the best introduction to Merleau-Ponty's work available. It provides a clear and lucid overview of the whole of Merleau-Ponty's thought, presenting the central ideas and themes of his writings in an accessible yet rigorous way. As such, it will be of interest to beginners and advanced scholars alike.' - Mark Wrathall, University of Oxford , UK. '. a wonderful exposition of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy as a whole. It offers clear explanations of Merleau-Ponty's ideas and some of the most significant theories and movements that influenced him, and shows how his thinking developed across the course of his life. In addition, Carman has written with great panache.' - Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, University of Sheffield , UK. 'Carman's accounting is nuanced, closely argued, and exceptionally clear. His introduction covers the whole of Merleau-Ponty's considerable corpus, tracing its development and exhibiting its continued relevance for contemporary debates in phenomenology and psychology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. It will be enormously useful to teachers and students seeking an accessible introduction to Merleau-Ponty's writings.' - Wayne Martin, University of Essex, UK. 'This book is extremely well written - very clear and engaging - and, with regard to its representation of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, the account is comprehensive and insightful. I would recommend this book as the first and main commentary for students to consult.' - Sebastian Gardner, University College London, UK. Taylor Carman: Merleau-Ponty. This book is a volume in the popular 'Routledge Philosophers' series, which aims to offer introductions to 'the great Western philosophers' that are suit able for 'those new to philosophy' while also providing 'essential reading for those interested in the subject at any level.' Writing such a diversely service able book on any major philosopher is a difficult task, and Merleau-Ponty is no exception. Although the general aim of his phenomenology is, as he once put it, to bring rationality 'down to earth', the philosophical transformation that it implies presents formidable challenges to any attempt to produce an accessible introduction that is both comprehensive and sound. Carman has thus had to strike a compromise between scope and depth. His chosen tack is informed by the work of Hubert Dreyfus on the bodily foundations of intelligence. As stated in a brief introduction, Carman's interest lies in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception, taking perception to designate 'our most basic mode of being in the world', the bodily, perspectival, and self-concealing nature of which is 'in principle generalizable to all aspects of the human condition' (3). With this focus, the book unfolds through seven chapters that reflect the generic format of the series: historical contextualization, critical exposition of 'key arguments', and discussion of 'legacy'. Opening with a perfunctory biography, Chapter 1, 'Life and Works', situates the subject matter in broad strokes. In particular, Carman discusses the general nature of perception for Merleau-Ponty, and considers the formative influences of Husserl and Gestalt psychology. Although this is all necessarily run through quite quickly, Carman takes special care to distance Merleau-Ponty from Husserl. In part he does this by singling out rationalism, rather than all approaches based on lle prejuge du monde', as Merleau-Ponty's 'abiding philosophical bete noire' (11, 27). What results is the tacit--but dubious--claim that Merleau-Ponty's account of perception actually owes more to Heidegger. These points are elaborated in the next two chapters, 'Intentionality and Perception' and 'Body and World', where the bulk of the book's philosophical work occurs. Concerning intentionality, Carman reasserts that Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology is 'deeply antithetical' to Husserl's (37), and that, on the contrary, Merleau-Ponty 'embraced . wholeheartedly' Heidegger's notion of In-der-Welt-Sein (42). Although it glosses over important differences with Merleau-Ponty's own notion of etre-au-monde, this discussion undergirds Carman's exegesis of the introductory chapters of Phenomenology of Perception. So while this reading uncovers 'the phenomenal field' as a transcenden tal condition of perception (66; cf. 82,105), Carman still draws the conclusion that Merleau-Ponty, just like Heidegger, is doing ontology (74). The picture gets filled in somewhat with the discussion of embodiment, in particular the notions of the body schema and motor intentionality, and their connection with the worldly character of experience. Carman does a commendable job in relating Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological descriptions. But a major concern is that in discussing the normativity of perception in terms of a body's 'best grip' on things, Carman writes as if that were the end of the story. Merleau-Ponty himself rejected any such view. For it would be tantamount to conflating, as Carman tends to do, the perceptual disclosure of 'a world' with the realization of 'the world'. This distinction is crucial for Merleau-Ponty, and it is why inter subjectivity, history, and politics are so important to him philosophically. The next two chapters, 'Self and Others' and 'History and Politics', are thus the odd ones out. For given Carman's approach, the real work has been done at the level of the individual perceiving body. What remains is just to 'generalize'. Thus, although Carman recognizes that coexistence with others in a kind of primordial solidarity is one of 'the most original and important' aspects of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology (135), what his discussion actually ends up highlighting is that the experience of others is 'perpetually enigmatic and destabilizing' (150). Left unaddressed is Merleau-Ponty's insistence that it is only through active engagement with others, not merely coexistence alongside them, that one can move from 'a world' of idiosyncratic corporeal perspectivity toward 'the world' of genuine sense and truth. This is the central idea in Merleau-Ponty's political thought, the philosophical significance of which is obscured by Carman's assumption that the latter rests on an analogical extension from the body to history (24, 162). What this overlooks is the extent to which, for Merleau-Ponty, the normative horizons of perception ultimately devolve from a commitment to the possibility of historical rationality. Chapter 6, 'Vision and Style', engages in close readings of Merleau-Ponty's texts on aesthetics. It has a very different dynamic from the rest of the book, and it is certainly the best chapter, encapsulating nicely an overall view of Merleau-Ponty's work in terms of perception, meaning, and freedom. The main worry is that the pivotal ideas of expression and style, ideas to which Merleau-Ponty ascribed general phenomenological significance, are effectively reduced to narrowly aesthetic categories. The last chapter briefly entertains some aspects of Merleau-Ponty's 'legacy and relevance'. Carman considers Merleau-Ponty's role in the emergence of structuralism, and links him to Bourdieu's notion of habitus (which he uses as a foil against Searle). Carman then points out Merleau- Ponty's role in arguments against behaviourism and cognitivism, drawing particular attention to Dreyfus' work. Finally, Carman turns to certain paradigms of embodied cognition (Varela, Clark, Noe) that variously diverge from the basic picture he has drawn. The point here is to deny any real connection to Merleau-Ponty. While the negative rationale is plain, it is disappointing that an introductory text wraps up on such a transparently polemical note. Overall, it would be at most a slight exaggeration to say that the philosophical thrust of the book is to identify Merleau-Ponty--supposedly 'one of the most interesting and original philosophers of the twentieth century' (1)--as the go-to guy for the account of corporeality needed to shore up a Heideggerian theory of 'skilled coping'. To be sure, there is distinct merit in this effort, and it will appeal to many with specialized interests. But at the same time, the restricted view that results from locating Merleau-Ponty within such narrow horizons detracts from the book's suitability as an initial introduction to his thought. The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty. Taylor Carman and Mark Hansen, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty , Cambridge University Press, 2005, 406pp, $27.99 (pbk), ISBN: 0521007771. Reviewed by Jack Reynolds, University of Tasmania. The authors and themes chosen for any particular edition of the Cambridge Companion series are always likely to constitute a point of contestation, and this latest volume dedicated to Maurice Merleau-Ponty is no exception. While the essays are generally first-rate, and although two of the most important French-speaking Merleau-Ponty scholars have contributed excellent essays to this collection (Merleau-Ponty's one-time student and some-time interlocutor, Claude Lefort, and Renaud Barbaras, Professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne), many of the major scholars involved in the reinvigoration of Merleau-Ponty's thought in the US and around the English-speaking world are absent. Much of the renewed attention accorded to Merleau-Ponty's work has revolved around debates concerning his proximity to, and distance from, post-structuralism, but philosophers preoccupied with such themes were not, it seems, asked to contribute. Similarly, none of the key players in the Merleau-Ponty Circle and their annual conferences is included in this volume and there is an emphasis upon what might be called an 'analytic' interpretation of Merleau- Ponty. This is both a strength and a weakness of this volume. After all, the work of Merleau-Ponty is very useful as a means to eschew the 'representationalism' that still undergirds a lot of analytic philosophy and cognitive science, as well as to combat any reductionism when it comes to adequately thematising the relation between mind and body. This volume takes Merleau-Ponty's work up in relation to analytic philosophy of mind (and science), giving sustained attention to figures as diverse as Wilfrid Sellars, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Willard Quine, John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, Gareth Evans, and John Searle. This is particularly so in regard to the essays of Charles Taylor ('Merleau-Ponty and the Epistemological Picture') and Taylor Carman, the latter of whom succinctly outlines Merleau-Ponty's reasons for rejecting intellectualism and empiricism. Mark Wrathall's interesting essay, 'Motives, Reasons and Causes', is also in this vein, and Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly continue their inquiries into the normative importance of developing skills and maintaining an equilibrium for Merleau-Ponty. At the same time, the neglect of the more avowedly 'continental' interpretation of Merleau-Ponty means that this volume leaves some important questions about his work and its legacy unaddressed. While the editors of this book -- Carman and Hansen -- acknowledge the ongoing debates regarding how to situate Merleau-Ponty in relation to his immediate successors on the French scene (Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, etc.), it is notable that when they cite one of Deleuze and Guattari's comments about Merleau-Ponty in What is Philosophy? they misconstrue Deleuze and Guattari's position. The account of Merleau-Ponty in What is Philosophy? is far from favourable and certainly does not, as they claim, use "Merleau-Ponty's concept of the flesh as the key to what he calls the being of sensation" (19). On the contrary, for Deleuze and Guattari, Merleau-Ponty's 'pious' notion of the flesh is not up to this job because it remains committed to a version of transcendence (I think that Deleuze and Guattari are wrong in this regard and many of the essays included in this volume indirectly serve to show this). Carman and Hansen also state that Merleau-Ponty's work has not been seriously engaged with by Derrida, yet this is not the case -- Derrida's Memoirs of the Blind and On Touching -- Jean-Luc Nancy both engage with Merleau-Ponty at considerable length. These comments betray the one area that is not covered by the essays included here and because of that some potentially interesting questions aren't really posed. For example, to what extent did Merleau-Ponty's notion of a hyper- dialectic presage the strategy of deconstruction? To what extent might Merleau-Ponty's ultimate ontological position in The Visible and the Invisible achieve a philosophy of immanence that parallels Deleuze's ambitions for his own philosophy? How might his work challenge Derrida's and Deleuze's positions? What kind of influence has Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the body had upon French feminism and feminism per se , and what disputes has it occasioned? While Carman and Hansen rightly note the 'for' or 'against' logic at work in much of the literature on Merleau- Ponty and his post-structuralist successors, this oppositional tendency is only intimated, rather than argued against, and this is because their book privileges the aspects of Merleau-Ponty's work that are most capable of recuperation within the analytic tradition. It is hard to see, for example, how Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible might be read as a "turn away from the anti-humanist radicalisation of ontology" (22), and, by implication, a turn away from post-structuralism. The anti-humanism of this text is stated in multiple places. More important than these omissions, however, is what The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty accomplishes. Along with the sustained rapprochement with analytic philosophy, it very effectively and thoroughly situates Merleau-Ponty's work in the context of Husserl's phenomenology. It is also a particularly timely volume, because several of the essays focus on Merleau-Ponty's 'Course Notes' which have only been published in English in the past few years, notably Nature and The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul . These two texts are taken up at length in excellent essays by Judith Butler, Renaud Barbaras, Mark Hansen, and others. Judith Butler's very subtle and nuanced essay, 'Merleau-Ponty and the Touch of Malebranche', traces what The Visible and the Invisible owes to Merleau-Ponty's much earlier engagement with Malebranche in the lectures that have been published as The Incarnate Subject . Recognition of this, she argues, helps us to radicalise The Visible and the Invisible and to foreground as its dominant concern the constitution of subjectivity through touch. In his essay, 'A Phenomenology of Life', Barbaras traces the importance of Merleau-Ponty's lectures on nature to his ontological position in The Visible and the Invisible . Similarly, Mark Hansen in 'The Embryology of the (In)visible' pursues the question of life and details the importance of evolutionary biology to Merleau-Ponty's later work. Hansen argues that in this light we can see the manner in which Merleau-Ponty's ultimate philosophical position is very much a philosophy of immanence -- the living body's so-called 'transcendence' is simply its belonging to the world. Hansen also suggests that Merleau-Ponty's work provides us with the resources to view the philosophy/science relation without: a) either reducing the significance of human intentionality; or b) privileging it hierarchically over other lower-order organisms. Because of this, he suggests that Merleau-Ponty can avoid the extreme interpretations of this relation offered by Daniel Dennett and Francisco Varela. In 'Merleau-Ponty's Existential Conception of Science', Joseph Rouse also explores Merleau-Ponty's conception of science, but pays more attention to Merleau- Ponty's early works -- The Structure of Behaviour and Phenomenology of Perception rather than The Visible and the Invisible -- and the two essays hence complement each other well. Richard Shusterman's essay, 'The Silent, Limping Body of Philosophy', simplifies Merleau-Ponty's position so that it can be denigrated for not allowing of something akin to the Alexander technique of deliberate bodily reflection. Shusterman seems to misunderstand the complexity of habit and skill development, instead insisting that in Merleau-Ponty's work there is a "polarisation of lived experience versus representations that neglects the fruitful option of 'lived corporeal reflection'" (165). As Dreyfus' essay in this very book brings out, representational thought is not 'irrelevant', as Shusterman declares. Rather, it is an important aspect of learning a skill, but it is based upon a pre-reflective engagement with the world and cannot be divorced from this. This does not preclude techniques of bodily reflection, which can and may well be useful. Strangely, Shusterman goes on to suggest that Merleau-Ponty's 'lived body' is always the observing subject (174), and he responds that "to treat the lived body as a subject does not require treating it only as a purely transcendental subject that can also be observed as an empirical one" (174). That, of course, is not Merleau-Ponty's point (in fact, it seems more accurate of Sartre, whose account of the body Merleau-Ponty criticises at some length). For Merleau-Ponty, our experience is fundamentally not one of an 'observing subject', which he would characterise as 'high-altitude thinking'. While he would not admit of a fusion of the experiences of touching and being touched, he would insist that touching and being touched encroach upon one another in such a way that there is no pure touching, no pure seeing, and no pure transcendental subject. What is touched (the world) ramifies upon the touching (the subject), and this is precisely what ensures ambiguity. As with most of the other Cambridge Companions , the last three essays in this book focus upon Merleau-Ponty's views on, and significance for, art and politics. His influential work on art is taken up by Jonathan Gilmore, who argues that Merleau-Ponty's three key essays on art extend and develop his philosophical views, but themselves offer no 'philosophy of art' (292). Interestingly, this is precisely what Deleuze and Guattari also claim in What is Philosophy? when they ponder, and doubt, whether Merleau-Ponty's concept of the flesh is adequate to art, to what they call the "being of sensation" (WP 178-9). In her provocative essay, Lydia Goehr juxtaposes the engaged philosopher, Merleau-Ponty, against the committed writer and public political figure, Sartre, and examines their long relationship with each other's thought, especially as it plays out in the political realm and their eventual acrimonious parting. Goehr suggests that the content of their respective political positions and relation to Marxism was largely similar (might it not be said that they moved in opposing directions, that Sartre began further from Marxism but eventually moved closer, whereas Merleau-Ponty began closer to Marxism in texts like Humanism and Terror but then moved further away?). For Goehr, however, where Sartre and Merleau-Ponty most clearly differed was on the question of the form of any political engagement. In this respect, she contrasts the polemical engagement of Sartre with the philosophical engagement of Merleau-Ponty, and examines the latter's suggestions that the role of the philosopher should be situated in contradistinction to those of the politician and the artist. Suggesting that Merleau-Ponty advocates neither the apolitical engagement of the artist, nor the engaged action of the politician, she asks whether his own political 'middle way' becomes ineffectual. Although Goehr does not pursue this, arguably some of the questions that she raises about the form of Merleau-Ponty's politics also apply to some of the contemporary post-structuralist thinkers who offer related reasons for resisting the Sartrean conception of the committed intellectual. Claude Lefort also examines political issues in his essay 'Thinking Politics', offering a more sympathetic overview of Merleau-Ponty's relation to Marx and Marxism. This juxtaposition of two essays following one another on similar topics, but from diverse viewpoints, is characteristic of this volume. Whether or not it was deliberate, it is both apt and productive; it opens questions and issues up for further thought, rather than presuming to offer some kind of final verdict on this long dead philosopher, and this is something that Merleau-Ponty's own 'hyper-dialectical' thought would welcome. Merleau-Ponty by Taylor Carman. Philosophy Professor Barnard College Columbia University. Contact. Department of Philosophy Barnard College 3009 Broadway New York, NY 10027. Shout into the abyss. Praise for the First Edition : 'Carman gives a fresh, clear, and convincing account of Merleau-Ponty's thought. His book is the best available thus far and should be required reading for those interested in Merleau-Ponty's original and important ideas and how they relate both to our pervasive perceptual experience and to current philosophical debate.' - Hubert Dreyfus, University of California, Berkeley, USA. 'This is the best introduction to Merleau-Ponty's work available. It provides a clear and lucid overview of the whole of Merleau-Ponty's thought, presenting the central ideas and themes of his writings in an accessible yet rigorous way. As such, it will be of interest to beginners and advanced scholars alike.' - Mark Wrathall, University of Oxford , UK. '. a wonderful exposition of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy as a whole. It offers clear explanations of Merleau-Ponty's ideas and some of the most significant theories and movements that influenced him, and shows how his thinking developed across the course of his life. In addition, Carman has written with great panache.' - Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, University of Sheffield , UK. 'Carman's accounting is nuanced, closely argued, and exceptionally clear. His introduction covers the whole of Merleau-Ponty's considerable corpus, tracing its development and exhibiting its continued relevance for contemporary debates in phenomenology and psychology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. It will be enormously useful to teachers and students seeking an accessible introduction to Merleau-Ponty's writings.' - Wayne Martin, University of Essex, UK. 'This book is extremely well written - very clear and engaging - and, with regard to its representation of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, the account is comprehensive and insightful. I would recommend this book as the first and main commentary for students to consult.' - Sebastian Gardner, University College London, UK. Merleau-Ponty. Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) is one of the most important philosophers of the Twentieth century. His theories of perception and the role of the body have had an enormous impact on the humanities and social sciences, yet the full scope of his contribution not only to phenomenology but philosophy generally is only now becoming clear. In this lucid and comprehensive introduction, Taylor Carman explains and assesses the full range of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Merleau-Ponty’s life and work, subsequent chapters cover fundamental aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, including his philosophy of perception and intentionality; the role of the body in relation to perception; philosophy of history and culture; and his writings on art and aesthetics, particularly the work of Cezanne. A final chapter considers Merleau-Ponty’s importance today, examining his philosophy in light of recent developments in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Merleau-Ponty is essential reading for students of phenomenology, existentialism and Twentieth century philosophy. It is also ideal for anyone in the humanities and social sciences seeking an introduction to his work.