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February 5, 2004
Merleau Ponty:
"Phenomeology is a philosophy for which the world is always "already there" before reflection begins---as an inalienable presence; and all its efforts are concentrated upon reachieving a direct and primitive contact with the world , and endowing that contact with a philosophical status."
The Phenomenology of Perception
The historical background to the sentiments in the above quote lay in the malaise with modern philosophy and science; a sense of emptiness and breakdown; and a demand that philosophy be relevant, and speak to the concerns of everyday life.
Edmund Husserl in his, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, expressed it this way:
'We make our beginning with a change which set in at the turn of the past century [ie., 1900] in the general evaluation of the sciences. It concerns not the scientific character of the sciences but rather what they, or what science in general, had meant and could mean for human existence. The exclusiveness with which the total world view of modern man, in the second of the nineteenth century let itself be determined by the positive sciences and be blinded by the 'prosperity' they produced, meant an indifferent turning away from the questions which are decisive for a genuine humanity." (pp.5-6)
Husserl had a positivist science in his sights.
That feeling was present in Australia in the latter part of the 20th century--eg., with the 1968ers. But that generation lacked the philosophical tools to turn the hostility towards modern (positivist) philosophy and science to questions of the meangingfulness and meaninglessness of human existence.
What was inherited from thsi critique of positivism was social theory in the form of the Frankfurt School's critique of instrument reason and the culture industry, plus the becoming familar with the poststructuralist French theory of Derrida Foucault and Lacan.
What was missed was the philosophy behind this critical social theory and a conception of philosophy as both a critique and creative. What needed to be recovered from the digging out from the edifice of modern philosophy was philosophy as a political activity.
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It's very interesting what you've written here and I think there's a great deal to be said for a philosophy of the body and physically lived experience. I read some Merleau-Ponty in college but now I think I would like to re-read his work. My favorite philosopher is actually Benjamin, who's philosophy is also very physical, but more in the relationship between people and the objects around them.