The phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty : a search for the limits of consciousness / by Gary Brent Madison ; foreword by Paul Ricoeur ; translated from the French by the author.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Madison, Gary Brent.

Series:

Series in Continental thought ; 3.

Series in continental thought ; 3

Standardized Title:

Phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908-1961.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice.

Phenomenology.

Physical Description:

xxxii, 345 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens : Ohio University Press, [1981]

Summary:

The first study of its kind to appear in English, The Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty is a sustained ontological reading of Merleau-Ponty which traces the evolution of his philosophy of being from his early work to his late, unfinished manuscripts and working notes. Merleau-Ponty, who contributed greatly to the theoretical foundations of hermeneutics, is here approached hermeneutically. Most commentators are agreed that towards the end Merleau-Ponty's philosophy underwent a strange and interesting mutation. The exact nature of this mutation or conceptual shift is what this study seeks to disclose. Thus, although Madison proceeds in a generally progressive, chronological fashion, examining Merleau-Ponty's major works in the order of their composition, his reading is ultmately regressive in that Merleau-Ponty's earlier works are viewed in the light of the new and enigmatic ontological orientation which makes its appearance in his later work. The merit of this approach is that, as Paul Ricoeur has remarked, it enables the author to expose the "anticipatory, hollowed-out presence" of Merleau-Ponty's late philosophy "in the difficulties of his early phenomenology," such that "the unifying intention between his first philosophy of meaning and the body and the late, more ontological philosophy is made manifest." This book begins with a detailed study of Merleau-Ponty's two major early works, The Structure of BehaviorThe Phenomenology of Perception. In the following three chapters, Madison traces the development of Merleau-Ponty's thought from the beginning to the end of his philosophical career in regard to three topics of special concern to the French phenomenologist: painting, language, philosophy. In the final chapter, he is concerned to articulate, as much as the unfinished state of Merleau-Ponty's final work allows, the unspoken thought of this work and of The Visible and Invisible in particular. Merleau-Ponty's notion of "wild being" and his attempt to work out an "indirect" or "negative" ontology are thoroughly analyzed. In the end the reader will see that through his self-criticism and the development in his own phenomenology Merleau-Ponty has brought phenomenology itself to its limits and to the point where it must transcend itself as a philosophy of consciousness in the Husserlian sense if it is to remain faithful to Husserl's own goal of bringing "experience to the full expression of its own meaning." Because Madison submits Merleau-Ponty to the same kind of interpretive retrieval as the latter did with Husserl, Roger Cailloise has said of this "clear and very complete book" that it "goes will beyond a simple exposition and merits being read as an original work."

Contents:

Chapter I. The Phenomenal Field: Being in the World 1

I. Discovery of Being in the World 1

1. The Structures of Behavior 2

The Physical Order 3

The Vital Order 5

The Human Order 7

2. The Essential Features of Structure 7

Linear Causality or Vertical Structuration? 8

The Relations between "structure" and "meaning" and the Problem of Perceptual Consciousness 14

II. Exploration of Being in the World 19

1. Being in the World as Circularity 21

The Lived Body 22

The Perceived World 26

Other People 37

2. Being in the World as Transcendence 45

3. Being in the World as Rootedness 51

Chapter II. Painting 73

I. Cezanne 75

1. Art and Nature 75

2. Nature and the Universal 82

II. The Voices of Silence 84

1. The Unity of Painting 84

2. Silence and Expression 86

3. History and Truth 89

III. Eye and Mind 95

1. The Flesh of the Sensible 97

2. The Seeing Vision 100

3. The Deflagration of Being 102

Chapter III. Language 108

I. The Phenomenology of Speech 109

1. Speech 109

2. Language 119

II. The Phenomenon of Expression 127

1. The Expressibility of Life 128

2. Time Reflected, Recaptured 132

III. The Ontological Foundations of Expression 137

1. Archeology 138

2. Teleology 139

3. Vertical Being 141

Chapter IV. Philosophy 145

I. Towards a Phenomenology of Phenomenology 146

1. The Point of View of the Spectator 146

2. The Transcendental Point of View 150

3. The Radical Point of View 156

4. Critical Considerations 162

II. From Phenomenology to Ontology 166

1. The Flesh 168

2. Philosophical Interrogation 183

Chapter V. The Field of Being 204

I. Being and the World 206

II. Being and Logos 219

III. Being and Man 222

IV. Being and Time 254

Appendix I. Concerning Merleau-Ponty: Two Readings of His Work 267

Appendix II. Merleau-Ponty and the Counter-Tradition 291.

Notes:

Translation of: La phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0821404482

OCLC:

7553501