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New Perspectives in Ontology

Merleau-Ponty and Nancy on Sense and BeingAt the Limits of Phenomenology

By Marie-Eve Morin

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£100.00

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About this book

Brings a new dimension to thinking about philosophical materialism and realism in the wake of phenomenology and deconstruction
  • Challenges speculative realism’s critique of contemporary Continental philosophy as correlationism
  • Uses Merleau-Ponty and Nancy to develop an ontology that respects the materiality and exteriority of what exists without reinstating the mind–world divide
  • Shows 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 sense
  • Defends anthropomorphism as a way of overcoming the Cartesian–Sartrian ontology of the object

Marie-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.

Reviews

This book performs work that has not yet been done and that is really very important in understanding French phenomenology, its legacy, and its relation to Nancy, a key contemporary thinker. Written with extraordinary rigour, it is a major contribution to thinking about philosophical materialism and realism in the wake of phenomenology and deconstruction.

Table of contents

Introductioni. The Context: The Speculative Realist Challengeii. The Limits of Phenomenology: Being and Senseiii. Merleau-Ponty and Nancy: Influence and Resonancesiv. Breakdown

Part I – Body

1. Merleau-Ponty, Descartes and the Unreflected Life of the Bodyi. Reading Descartes: The Relation Between Reflection and the Unreflectedii. Sensing and Self-Sensing Body of the Phenomenology of Perceptioniii. The Problem of the Phenomenology of Perception: Tacit Versus Operative Cogito

2. Nancy, Descartes, the Exposition of Bodies and the Extension of the Souli. Nancy’s Reading of Descartes: The Unum Quid Against the Modern Subjectii. Nancy’s Bodies: Skin, Sense, Touch

3. Divergences: Unity Versus Dislocationi. Synthesis of the Body Schema or Partes extra Partes?ii. Synaesthesia or Dislocation of the Senses? Self-Touching or Touching the Outside?

Part II – Thing

4. Things in the Phenomenology of Perception: The Paradox of an In-Itself-for-Usi. The Order of the Phenomena: Between Being and Appearanceii. Answering the Accusation of Correlationismiii. The Limit of the Answer in the Phenomenology and the Move to Ontology

5. Things After the Phenomenology: Merleau-Ponty’s Cautious Anthropomorphismi. Sartre’s Thingsii. Merleau-Ponty’s Thingsiii. Anthropomorphism as Defamiliarization

6. Nancy’s Materialism and the Stonei. The Freedom of the Stone and the Creation of the Worldii. The Existence of the Stone and Its Feeling Hardiii. Materialism, Materiality, Matteriv. Thinking and Things

Part III – Being

7. Merleau-Ponty’s and Nancy’s Engagement with Heideggeri. Is Merleau-Ponty’s Late Ontology Heideggerian?ii. Merleau-Ponty Between Husserl’s Wesenschau and Heidegger’s Weseniii. Merleau-Ponty Between the Negativism of Doubt and the Positivism of Essencesiv. Merleau-Ponty’s Indirect Ontologyv. Nancy and Heidegger’s Withdrawal of Being

8. Two Ontologies of Sensei. Merleau-Ponty, Écart, and the Fleshii. Narcissism and the Reversibility of the Chiasmiii. Écart as Encroachment or Separationiv. Conclusion: Two Ontologies of Sense for Our Time

NotesBibliography

About the author

Marie-Eve Morin

Marie-Eve Morin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. She is the author of many articles on Derrida, Heidegger, Nancy, Sartre, Latour, and Sloterdijk. She is also the author of Jean-Luc Nancy (Polity, 2012) and is the co-editor, with Peter Gratton, of The Nancy Dictionary (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) and Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking: Expositions of World, Politics, Art, and Sense (SUNY, 2012). She is editor of Continental Realism and its Discontents (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

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