Abstract
A critical assessment of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of phenomenology highlights singular differences between Husserl’s phenomenological methodology and existential analysis, between epistemology and ontology, and between essential and individualistic perspectives. When we duly follow the rigorous phenomenological methodology described by Husserl, we are confronted with the challenge of making the familiar strange and with the challenge of languaging experience. In making the familiar strange, we do not immediately have words to describe what is present, but must let the experience of the strange resonate for some time, and even then, must return to it many times over to pinpoint its aspects, character, or quality in descriptively exacting ways. Moreover as Husserl points out, language can seduce us into thinking we know when we do not know. The methodology thus highlights the import of being true to the truths of experience, and in doing so, authenticates the basic value of a phenomenological methodology to the human sciences.
Highlights
The title of this essay is obviously related to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s essay “In Praise of Philosophy,” a title that is itself the title of a book of his essays
Merleau-Ponty first discusses the works of Lavelle, Bergson, and Socrates (Lavelle and Bergson having preceded him as Chair of Philosophy), and moves on to discuss the relationship of religion and history to philosophy, and to discuss philosophy itself. He states the mission of his inaugural lecture as follows: Phenomenology & Practice 6
Merleau-Ponty had, after all, done considerable work both in terms of teaching and writing in the area of phenomenology by the time he became Chair of Philosophy in 1952. His omission of any mention of phenomenology is perplexing since his appointment and the achieved fame it suggests would seem to be based on what was regarded as his innovative phenomenological vision, or more precisely, his innovative phenomenologically-influenced vision of philosophy
Summary
The title of this essay is obviously related to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s essay “In Praise of Philosophy,” a title that is itself the title of a book of his essays. By specifying in exacting terms the nature of the ongoing ontological reality and relationship of subject-world in the reduction, he shows how reciprocal understandings may be formed between phenomenological psychology and transcendental phenomenology, that is, between the “natural” and the “transcendental” and what he views more broadly as between empirical science and transcendental science In this context it is instructive to point out that what Merleau-Ponty considers an individual labor —i.e., “We shall find in ourselves, and nowhere else, the unity and true meaning of phenomenology.”-- is not in truth an investigative—or interrogative—free-for-all, so to speak. What appears to stand in the way of explicit verification is the promotion of a different kind of practice: Merleau-Ponty as well as Derrida, Heidegger, and other phenomenologists carry out studies that are individualistic and that implicitly affirm as Merleau-Ponty affirms, “We shall find in ourselves, and nowhere else, the unity and true meaning of phenomenology” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. viii)
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