The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul

by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Patrick Burke

This volume is the English translation of sixteen lectures by Maurice Merleau-Ponty given at the École Normale Superieure in 1947-48 and reconstituted on the basis of notes taken by some of his most outstanding students. Devoted to three of the great names in the French philosophical tradition, Malebranche, Maine de Biran, and Bergson, these lectures center on a classic the union of the soul and the body. They reveal a line of reasoning that Merleau-Ponty had already traced in The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception , and anticipate later developments of his innovative philosophical inquiry in Signs and The Visible and the Invisible .

In these lectures Merleau-Ponty demonstrates how Malebranche had articulated an early phenomenology of the human condition, how Maine de Biran had anticipated the central project and related themes of the Phenomenology of Perception , and how certain features of Bergson's method announce key elements of the philosophical methodology expressed in Merleau-Ponty's later works. This volume contains one of Merleau-Ponty's most sustained explications and critiques of Bergson's Matter and Memory , and, more important, his only major presentation and critique of the thought of Maine de Biran.

The serious student of Merleau-Ponty and of the history of philosophy will find this unique volume of a hitherto-untranslated work of great value.

Genres: Philosophy

152 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1997

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

[Adrian Colesberry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a series of lectures reconstructed from the notes of several students who took this philosophical survey class from Merleau-Ponty in Paris back in the 1950s. In the introduction, we learn that Michele Foucault treasured his notes, although, unfortunately they were not available for the preparation of this manuscript.
For my level of philosophical sophistication, it was rough going. Being written from student's notes, it's a lot like reading Aristotle... telegraphic, concise, not fulsomely explanatory. But Jan Patocka's Body Community Language World is from student's notes and that's extraordinary. The bigger problem for me was that Merleau-Ponty in these lectures was not explicating but criticizing the work of the three philosophers in question, Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson.
I am not well versed enough in these philosophers to be able to construct a coherent picture of their philosophy from a text that is essentially trying to poke holes in it. In this regard, I was particularly disappointed in the section on Biran. Merleau-Ponty is particularly sharp in his criticism and it's nearly impossible to get a beat on what exactly Biran's arguments were. The section on Malebrance is better and the one on Bergson contains some real jewels. Only worth the slog for the more sophisticated than I or for the reading masochists who will slog through damn the torpedoes.

[Kamakana · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

261111: this is a collection of notes from lecture m-p gave, so I can see how his lectures would be engaging, but unfortunately he refers to three philosophers in the French tradition, only one of which I know, even then only a little- Bergson. so this rating is very much more based on my ignorance than his work. maybe I will come back to it...