Merleau-Ponty and Nancy on Sense and Being: At the Limits of Phenomenology

Description

Brings a new dimension to thinking about philosophical materialism and realism in the wake of phenomenology and deconstructionChallenges speculative realism’s critique of contemporary Continental philosophy as correlationismUses Merleau-Ponty and Nancy to develop an ontology that respects the materiality and exteriority of what exists without reinstating the mind–world divideShows how Merleau-Ponty and Nancy overcome the Cartesian presupposition at work in current realist appeal to step out of our own thoughts to reach the ‘great outdoors’Provides an alternative to the phenomenological reduction of being to senseDefends anthropomorphism as a way of overcoming the Cartesian–Sartrian ontology of the objectMarie-Eve Morin proposes a reinterpretation of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and Nancy from the perspective of realist and object-oriented tendencies in contemporary philosophy. The realist critique of subject-centred anthropocentric thinking indicates the danger, inherent in the phenomenological approach, of reducing being to sense. Morin demonstrates how Merleau-Ponty and Nancy avoid this pitfall through the development of ontologies that respect the materiality and exteriority of what exists without reaffirming the Cartesian divide between mind and world.Morin orients her analysis around three ideas where Merleau-Ponty’s and Nancy’s thinking intersect: Body, Thing, Being. Each time, she tracks the role of difference or spacing within sensing and sense-making. She concludes that their respective conceptions – as encroachment and promiscuity or as unpassable limit – may provide counterweights to each other.