Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) by Leonard Lawlor (Foreword, Translator) › Visit Amazon's Leonard Lawlor Page search results for this author Leonard Lawlor (Foreword, Translator), Maurice M...

by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Combining Maurice Merleau-Ponty's course notes on Husserl's Origin of Geometry, his "Course Summary," related texts, and critical essays by each of the co-translators, this collection provides a unique and welcome glimpse both into Merleau-Ponty's nuanced reading of Husserl's famed late writings and into his persistent effort to track the very genesis of truth through the incarnate idealization of language.In his notes, Merleau-Ponty focuses primarily on Husserl's well-known "Origin of Geometry" text from the Crisis and on another of his posthumous texts on the phenomenological role of the Earth as Earth-ground. Both of these essays lead to what Merleau-Ponty called in a working note a "transcendental history"-an analysis of a geographical inscription of history. Likewise, Merleau-Ponty is concerned in these notes with the philosophical and ontological implications of the origin of idealization, the passage from passivity to activity, the interrelation between perception and rationality--or the intertwining of nature and logos. Because of the central role these themes played in Merleau-Ponty's thought, this volume provides an important supplement to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy and his relation to Husserl for the English-speaking reader. With the translators' essays connecting Merleau-Ponty to Derrida and Levinas as well as to Husserl, the volume should become a valuable sourcebook, an indispensable stopping point on a scholar's journey into the thought of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Levinas.

Genres: Philosophy

Paperback

First published November 21, 2001

About the author

French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like the other major phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, and politics; however Merleau-Ponty was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the Twentieth Century to engage extensively with the sciences, and especially with descriptive psychology. Because of this engagement, his writings have become influential with the recent project of naturalizing phenomenology in which phenomenologists utilize the results of psychology and cognitive science.

Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime. His father was killed in World War 1 when Merleau-Ponty was 3. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.

Merleau-Ponty first taught at Chartres, then became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).

After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.

Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for Les Temps Modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952.

Aged 53, he died suddenly of a stroke in 1961, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes. He was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Reviews

[Ng Yan]

(Leonard Lawlor)Foreword-Verflechtung: The Triple Significance of Merleau's Ponty Course Notes on Husserl's "The Origin of Geometry"

1. An expository text that lays out MP and Derrida's respective understanding of Husserl's explication of how geometrical ideas derives its 'objective' connotation from spiritual acts of idealization being reactivated again and again, i.e. the genesis of the objective sense of geometry.
2. Both MP and Derrida read the invention of language as a necessary condition for the inauguration of the practical success of geometry, i.e. the institution of the objective sense of geometry
3. MP and Derrida diverges at the sense of nonpresence, the ghostly presence, that calls for reproductive explication that reinstalls its self-evidence. MP thematizes 'non-presence' as 'formless content', whereas Derrida thematizes 'non-presence' as 'contentless form'.
4. According to MP, somewhere in between the disinterested spectator and the hypnotized monster comes the paradox of the (double) horizon- "...when it engulfs me truly (interests), it does not engulfs me truly(monster). When it does not engulf me truly since I conceive it and me in it (I escape), then I autoposit myself in it. Antihumanistic humanism"(BN 22).
5. MP's logic of the concept of interweaving, that man, word, language are interwoven [verflochten], is provided by the paradox of the horizon.

[David Markwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of Merleau-Ponty's lecture notes on three late pieces of Husserl's ('The Origin of Geometry,' 'Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: The Originary Ark, the Earth, Does Not Move,' 'The World of the Living Present and the Consitution of the Surrounding Wolrd That is Outside the Flesh,' all collected in this volume) offers a fascinating look at the development of Merleau-Ponty's ontology, his conception of ideality, and intersubjectivity. Lawlor and Bergo's translation includes a number of clarificatory notes which help 'fill in' what is missing from the text (due to it being lecture notes) without intruding or imposing an interpretation on the text. Lawlor's introduction and Bergo's afterwards are both fascinating reads as well. Lawlor's introduction argues for the centrality of writing in Merleau-Ponty's (and the late Husserl's) conception of ideality and brings Merleau-Ponty into dialogue with Derrida. Bergo's afterword discusses Merleau-Ponty's conception of phenomenology along with his philosophy's relationship to Husserl and Heidegger and argues that Merleau-Ponty's ontology ends up being not merely a recasting of Husserlian and Heideggerian ideas but something quite novel.