Why Merleau-Ponty? Why bother with a largely forgotten French philosopher of the mid-twentieth century?
The texts of this philosopher can be interpreted as an attempt in late modernity to climb out of the fly bottle of the mechanical materialist metaphsyics of modern natural science. He does this as part of the critique of the mathematization of nature in continental philosophy.
Merleau-Ponty's pathway is being-in-place, bodily movement, the lived body, place and the intertwining of body with place.
These texts opened up a space in which we understand that we get into place, move and stay there with our bodies.
This gives a materiality to Husserl's concept of the lifeworld that was developed as part of his critique of modern science and philosophy in his Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 6, 2004 05:04 PM | TrackBack