El modo carnal del acontecimiento: aportes de la Kehre heideggeriana a la fenomenología del cuerpo de Merleau-Ponty

This paper suggests that one single thread characterizes the developments of French phenomenology that occurred after 1990 in the wake of Merleau-Ponty's and Levinas's major contributions. Janicaud in 1991 had already identified one global trend in French phenomenology and believed it was possible to unite the thoughts of Levinas, Henry, Marion and Chrétien under the common banner of “theological phenomenology.” However, his analysis seems to fail to account for deeper-seated affinities that exist between French phenomenologists such as Marion, Lacoste, Chrétien, Richir, Depraz, Romano – and Benoist for part of his work. This is the reason why, although the present paper does agree with Janicaud's idea that the French authors who define themselves as phenomenologists share some common ground, it defines this common trend quite differently, i.e., as a form of epistemological realism that ultimately manifests itself as a radical empiricism.Consequently, the present study will state and defend three hypotheses: (1) contemporary French phenomenology professes a form of realism of experience, which is the true rallying point (space of exchange) of otherwise differing elaborations; (2) this type of epistemological empiricism, by virtue of its radicality, implies a problem that threatens to drive phenomenology towards its own dissolution, because as it precipitates in fine the dilution of philosophical discourse into a multitude of other discourses; (3) this variant of empiricism shows that, within its strictly defined viewpoint, there is scarcely any difference between French phenomenology and a certain part of French analytical philosophy. All three hypotheses lead to the same conclusion: the determination of the defining aspect of contemporary French phenomenology entails, beyond the apparent, misleading, and futile quarrel of paradigms, to bring to light a common space for contemporary French philosophy, which, from both perspectives, can be conveyed by the single term “to show.” It is, in fact, the elevation of “to show” to the detriment of “to demonstrate” that seems to ensnare thinkers within an impasse.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty enjoys a special place among contemporary French bourgeois philosophers and aestheticians. Statements by Sartre, Camus, Hyppolite, Dufrenne, Ricoeur, Geroux, Lévi-Strauss, and others show that they experienced (and some continue to this day to experience) in one way or another the influence of this philosopher. For example, all French phenomenologists and existentialists recognize that Merleau-Ponty was the first to take up and pursue, on French soil, the elaboration of the ideas of Husserlian phenomenology and German existentialism. (1) One cannot fail to note that various kinds of antidialectical and metaphysical notions have come into being under the direct and powerful influence of Merleau-Ponty.

We analyzed the work "The Inconspicuous God: Heidegger, French Phenomenology, and the Theological Turn", Jason W. Alvis, Indiana University Press, 2018, as well as reviews of it by Daniel Cox, Joerie Shrivers, Bernard Prusak. J. Alvis takes as a basis Heidegger's concept of eine phänomenologie des Unscheinbaren, which he tried to apply to the phenomenological study of religion and religious experience. Thus, synthesizing the concept of Martin Heidegger with the legacy of French philosophers, J. Alvis develops his own idea of inconspicuous phenomenology. The presented project by J. Alvis differs significantly from the context in which the analytical tradition today examines religious experience. Taking into account the novelty of the book, one can speak not only about the significant significance of this project in the continental philosophy of religion, but also about a new step in phenomenology, research on the developments of M. Heidegger and research on the concepts of religious experience. In the article, we analyzed how the approach of J. Alvis is connected with reduction, as well as with the era of entertainment, which the author so often mentions. Although J. Alvis himself does not mention the problem of God-forsakenness and secularized society, nevertheless his project can be successfully considered in the context of these problems of the 21st century. The work of J. Alvis that we have chosen, as well as the reviews of it, have not been translated into either Ukrainian or Russian, so this article can be perceived as an impetus for a dialogue between modern researchers of phenomenology and religious experience. Overcoming the stages of argumentation for his own project of imperceptible phenomenology, J. Alvis raises the ever-actual topic of dialectical perception and, in the end, calls for abandoning the outdated metaphysical dialectics. Quite a provocative thesis, but this is exactly how the researcher proposes to come up with a statement that the "phenomenology of religion" is not an oxymoron.

French philosophy opened up to German philosophy in the 1930s and to Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology during the Second World War. Existentialism was the main philosophical current until 1961, a year marked by Merleau-Ponty’s death. During the following twenty years, French philosophical life was dominated by what has been called ‘French structuralism’. This article shows how it was only at the beginning of the 1980s that, with structuralism losing its hegemony, a kind of renaissance of phenomenology took place, and how it came to be dominated by what has been called the ‘theological turn of French phenomenology’ in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Henry, and Jean-Luc Marion. In the last twenty years the proliferation of phenomenological works by young philosophers and the opening of phenomenology to the fields of art, anthropology, sociology, and psychiatry attest to the vitality of the French phenomenological movement.

Phenomenology is anything but a closed chapter in the history of French philosophy. In fact, it is stirring to such a degree that it would be premature to attempt a complete survey or even to collect titles in a more than provisional spirit. Much will depend on how the men whose names have appeared above the horizon continue their work on the phenomenological basis from which they have started.KeywordsCurrent DevelopmentEsthetic ExperiencePhenomenological MethodFrench PhilosophyEsthetic ObjectThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This essay is an attempt to read Merleau-Ponty’s ln Praise of Philosophy as a text in which the French phenomenologist breaks with Sartre and at the same time states his view on philosophical engagement and the relation between philosophy and politics. By reading this Lecture as a reply to Sartre I shall argue that there is a connection between this text and the lively debate that in the fifties opposed the two French philosophers on the place of philosophy in the Lebenswelt. In the letters exchanged at the time, first edited by François Ewald and published in 1994, one can find evidence for understanding their different views. In the Lecture Merleau-Ponty never mentions either Sartre’s name or his philosophy. However, I shall argue that some of Merleau-Ponty’s most important theses are directed against Sartre, namely, when the former claims that there is an opposition between the philosopher and the man of action (or the professional politician). In part one I shall analyse Sartre’s letter to Merleau-Ponty claiming that the Lecture is a self-justification of sorts and accusing him of practising the phenomenological ɛπoχη. This accusation by Sartre is evidence of a clear difference between the sartrean concept of “existential engagement” and Merleau--Ponty’s own concept of the refusal of choice. In part two, I shall try to show that ln Praise of Philosophy belongs to Merleau-Ponty’ s inquiries in phenomenology and this fact must be taken into account. The analysis of Merleau-Ponty’ s letter to Sartre explaining the Lecture clearly shows the relation between the concept of good ambiguity and the concept of engagement. At this point it becomes quite obvious that the dispute between the two philosophers is not over the meaning of engagement but indeed about the meaning of phenomenology and phenomenological ɛπoχη. I shall argue that Merleau-Ponty’s ambiguity is mainly a kind of the husserlean ɛπoχη. I shall also claim that one finds a clear echo of Husserl’ s Vienna Lecture in Merleau-Ponty’ s ln Praise of Philosophy. Finally, I shall show that both lectures are replies to unmentioned philosophers, in which both refuse to identify philosophy with political engagement or national engagement. For them, the task of philosophy is truth as engagement with humanity.

This article considers surface contact in the poetry of Francis Ponge and the work of two artists, Giuseppe Penone and Francis Alÿs, in relation to aspects of recent French philosophy and phenomenology. Ponge, Penone and Alÿs are all interested in the surface of things as the site of a coming to form, where human consciousness intervenes to divide matter up into objects. Each, in his different way, is drawn to the borderline between objects which can be identified, categorised and understood, and things which just are. Ponge's poetry sets out to encounter the thing in its thing-ness, but always ends up making it signify. Penone's endless examination of the leaving of traces offers another form of phenomenological encounter that explores human intervention in the world of things, whereas Alÿs's work often entails the failure to leave a trace. Through an exploration of the relation between surface and depth, and between signification and ‘mere’ being in the works of these three figures, the author explores how the ‘contact image’ might offer us a way of thinking about our position in relation to the being of things. It will be argued that a genealogy within French thought, from Sartre through Derrida to Jean-Luc Nancy, is shadowed in poetry and particularly in visual art, which, through the contact-image, offers us a particularly telling figure of the relationship between being and meaning.

This chapter examines the reception of Ravaisson’s account of habit in later nineteenth- and twentieth-century French philosophy. The first two sections examine its reception in the work of Albert Lemoine, Léon Dumont, and Henri Bergson. The third section examines its reception in the work of the French phenomenologists and theorists of the lived body, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. The chapter shows how Ravaisson’s account of inclination relates to these notions of the lived body. In conclusion, it shows how contemporary Merleau-Ponty-inspired accounts of pre-reflective, embodied action as a form of ‘coping’ can be extended by Ravaisson’s concern for tendency and inclination in motor habit.

The return of the repressed? Failure of nerve? However one wants to interpret the phenomenon, there is no gainsaying the fact: “religious” themes and theses have received sympathetic treatment with notable frequency in the writings of European philosophers in recent years. Whether it be the question of negative theology in the work of Derrida, the notion of Pauline “truth” in the exegesis of Badiou, the frequent reference to the spiritual in Foucault or more direct allusions to religious themes and images in the writings of Levinas, Ricoeur, Henry, Marion, Irigaray, Courtine, Chretien, and others, the religious in both its orthodox and its heterodox forms is enjoying an attention among professional philosophers that is unprecedented in our generation. The late Dominique Janicaud called attention to this fact in an influential essay entitled “The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology.”1

In this paper I consider Ricœur’s negotiation of the boundary or relationship between philosophy and religion in light of the larger debate in contemporary French philosophy. I suggest that contrasting his way of dealing with the intersection of the two discourses to that of two other French thinkers (Jean-Luc Marion and Michel Henry) illuminates his stance more fully. I begin with a brief outline of Ricœur’s claims about the distinction or relation between the discourses, then reflect on those of Marion and Henry, who although they do not relate them in the same way still together form a significant contrast to Ricœur’s perspective, and conclude with a fuller consideration of Ricœur’s methodology in light of this comparison. I suggest that it is in particular his hermeneutic commitments that lead him both to more rigorous distinctions between discourses and ironically to greater mediation.