Merleau-Ponty's Existential Phenomenology and the Realization of Philosophy

239 Pages·2014·1.617 MB·English

by  Bryan A. Smyth

Merleau-Ponty’s Existential
Phenomenology and the Realization
of Philosophy
Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy
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Merleau-Ponty’s Existential
Phenomenology and the Realization
of Philosophy
Bryan A. Smyth
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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First published 2014
© Bryan A. Smyth, 2014
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-7809-3705-2
ePDF: 978-1-7809-3786-1
ePub: 978-1-7809-3787-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smyth, Bryan A.
Merleau-Ponty’s Existential Phenomenology and the Realization of Philosophy/Bryan A. Smyth.
pages cm. – (Bloomsbury studies in continental philosophy)
Summary: “An original re-reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology by way of a
critical investigation of its crucial yet enigmatic references to ‘heroism’”– Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-78093-705-2 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-78093-787-8 (epub) –
ISBN 978-1-78093-786-1 (epdf) 1. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908-1961.
2. Phenomenology. 3. Heroes. 4. Courage. I. Smyth, Bryan A. II. Title.
B2430.M3764S58 2014
142’.7–dc23
2013039128
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
MMeerrlleeaauu ppoonnttyy..iinnddbb iivv 1111//55//22001133 33::3300::2277 PPMM
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Abbreviations Used in Text vii
Preface: Rereading Phenomenology of Perception ix
Introduction: Flight From Phenomenology? 1
1 Antoine de Saint Exupéry, “Soliloquizing Angel” 7
2 Embodiment and Incarnation 23
3 Totality and Embodiment 53
4 Elements of an Incarnational Marxism 71
5 Contemporary Heroism 107
Conclusion: Heroic Sublimation 141
Notes 151
Afterword 177
Bibliography 179
Index 199
Acknowledgments
The ideas in this book have been brewing for many years, and as is often the case,
they stem from much wider explorations. This means, among other things, that a large
number of people have contributed helpfully to them in various ways over the years.
For their particular forms of assistance, I would like to thank Alia Al-Saji, Renaud
Barbaras, Robert Bernasconi, Ronald Bruzina, Philip Buckley, Anna Carastathis,
Françoise Dastur, Duane Davis, Bernard Flynn, George di Giovanni, Wayne Froman,
John Hellman, Richard Holmes, Jonathan Kim-Reuter, Don Landes, Len Lawlor, Mary
Beth Mader, Iain Macdonald, Darian Meachum, Arsalan Memon, David Morris,
Stephen Noble, Richard Nutbrown, and Michel Rybalka. I would also like to thank
Suzanne Merleau-Ponty for kindly making available to me her volume of Merleau-
Ponty’s unpublished personal notes from the late 1940s (Notes inédites de Merleau-
Ponty, 1946–1949), and Kerry Whiteside for having transcribed these notes and for
conveying copies of the originals to me.
Very special thanks to Anne Quinney for her patient support and encouragement,
and to Fyntan and Aurélia for making everything so much more intensely rewarding. It
is to my parents that I owe the greatest debt—the book is dedicated to their memory.
Parts of the Preface and Conclusion are reprinted from “The Meontic and the
Militant: On Merleau-Ponty’s Relation to Fink,” International Journal of Philosophical
Studies, 19:5 (2011), 669–99, with the kind permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Parts of Chapter 5 are reprinted from “Heroism and History in Merleau-Ponty’s
Existential Phenomenology,” Continental Philosophy Review, 43:2 (2010), 167–91, with
kind permission from Springer Science  Business Media.
Abbreviations Used in Text
See bibliography for complete bibliographic information. Where applicable, page
references are given in the form “original/translation.” Translations are, however,
frequently modified.
Works by Merleau-Ponty
AD Les aventures de la dialectique (1955)/Adventures of the Dialectic (1973).
CR “Christianisme et ressentiment,” in Merleau-Ponty (1997), pp. 9–33.
EP Éloge de la philosophie (1953)/“In Praise of Philosophy,” in Merleau-Ponty
(1988), pp. 3–67.
HT Humanisme et terreur (1947)/Humanism and Terror (1969).
NI Notes inédites de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1946–1949.*
PhP Phénoménologie de la perception (1945).
PNPH “Philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel. Cours de 1960–1961,” in
Merleau-Ponty (1996b), pp. 269–352.
Pros. “Un inédit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” in Merleau-Ponty (2000), pp. 36–
48/“An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His
Work,” in Merleau-Ponty (1964b), pp. 3–11.
PrP “Le primat de la perception et ses conséquences philosophiques,” in Merleau-
Ponty (1996a), pp. 41–104/“The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical
Consequences,” in Merleau-Ponty (1964b), pp. 12–42.
Signs Signes (1960)/Signs (1964d).
SC La structure du comportement (1942)/The Structure of Behavior (1963).
SNS Sens et non-sens (1948)/Sense and Non-Sense (1964c).
TT “Titres et travaux: Projet d’enseignement,” in Merleau-Ponty (2000), pp.
9–35.
VI Le visible et l’invisible (1964a)/The Visible and the Invisible (1964e).
* Unpublished notes from the late 1940s. Collated, paginated, and transcribed by Kerry
Whiteside (see Whiteside 1988, 312ff). I would like to thank Suzanne Merleau-Ponty
and Kerry Whiteside for making copies of the originals as well as the transcription
available to me. Original assigned pagination is followed by transcription pagination
in square brackets. At Mme. Merleau-Ponty’s request, it should be noted that these
materials were never intended for publication.
viii Abbreviations Used in Text
Works by others
Carnets Saint Exupéry (1975), Carnets, édition intégrale.
EG Saint Exupéry (1982), Écrits de guerre.
EN Sartre (1943), L’être et le néant/Sartre (1956) Being and Nothingness.
ES Roger Caillois, (2003), The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader.
FTL Husserl (1969), Formal and Transcendental Logic.
HCC L ukács, (1967a), Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein/Lukács (1971), History
and Class Consciousness.
KrV Kant (1998), Critique of Pure Reason (standard A/B pagination).
KS Fink, “Die phänomenologische Philosophie Husserls in der gegenwärtigen
Kritik,” in Fink (1966), pp. 79–156/Fink (1970), “The Phenomenological
Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism.”
KU Kant (2000), Critique of the Power of Judgment (Akademie pagination).
MAM Saint Exupéry (1981), “Le marxisme anti-marxiste.”
MH Roger Caillois (1938), Le mythe et l’homme.
PG Saint Exupéry (1942c), Pilote de guerre (Gallimard).
SCM Fink (1988a), VI. Cartesianische Meditation, Teil 1/Fink (1995), Sixth
Cartesian Meditation.
SV Saint Exupéry (1956), Un sens à la vie.
SZ Heidegger (1957), Sein und Zeit/Heidegger (1962), Being and Time.
TD L ukács (2000), A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the
Dialectic.
TE Binswanger, “Traum und Existenz,” in Binswanger (1994), pp. 95–119.
TH Saint Exupéry (1939), Terre des hommes.
ÜP Binswanger, “Über Psychotherapie,” in Binswanger (1994), pp. 205–30.
Preface: Rereading Phenomenology
of Perception
As with other figures of like stature, there is a vast amount of secondary literature
devoted to the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The last decade or so in particular
has seen the publication of numerous new books. Why one more?
A critical glance at the situation in recent English-language Merleau-Ponty
scholarship may be instructive here. For we see that the vast majority of recent volumes
fall into one of the following two categories: (1) general introductions and reference
works,1 including several edited collections of a general nature,2 and (2) applications
of Merleau-Ponty’s work to specific topics or problems.3 Many of these contributions
are, in whole or in part, of significant scholarly value. But nonetheless, a clear pattern
emerges: in recent years little new basic interpretive research on Merleau-Ponty’s
philosophical work itself has been accorded book-length treatment, and what has
been published has invariably tended either to adopt an overall view of his corpus
that emphasizes his later works, or else to focus exclusively on the latter.4 In other
words, even though recent years have seen a marked upsurge in the level of interest
in Merleau-Ponty’s work, both within and beyond the disciplinary boundaries of
philosophy, and even though Phenomenology of Perception remains, by all accounts,
his magnum opus,5 there has been no new book-length scholarly contribution aimed
principally at coming to terms with the formulation of existential phenomenology that
this text epitomizes. There is, rather, an overwhelming tacit consensus that this early
stage of Merleau-Ponty’s work has, over the last 60-plus years, already been sufficiently
studied, such that there is really nothing new (of any philosophical consequence) to be
said about it.6 It might be expounded or elucidated or spun or summarized or applied
in this or that new way, but the standard working assumption is that with regard to
Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology in the immediate postwar period, there
remain, so to speak, no unturned stones.
Methodological questions
There can be no denying that Merleau-Ponty’s later works are of immense philosophical
interest, and this is especially true of the recently published and as-yet still unpublished
materials from his lectures at the Collège de France. Be that as it may, however, it
is fundamentally mistaken to maintain that critical scrutiny of Merleau-Ponty’s early
reinterpretation of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology as expressed primarily
in Phenomenology of Perception is, for all intents and purposes, an exhausted project.
There may be several reasons for this, but one aspect stands out quite prominently—to