Spirit and/or Flesh: Merleau-Ponty’s Encounter with Hegel

Abstract

This paper has four parts. First, I attempt to pinpoint how and why Merleau-Ponty was driven to go beyond Husserlian phenomenology, and did so for what are, largely, Hegelian reasons. Second, I trace the parallels between Hegel’s “metaphysics of Spirit” and Merleau-Ponty’s “ontology of the Flesh,” stressing the thinkers’ consensus about the nature of philosophical method. Third, I identify Merleau-Ponty’s criticisms of Hegel’s approach, and assay his claim that Hegel’s system actually constitutes a lapse into a pre-critical, pre-Kantian, naïve metaphysics. Fourth and finally, I examine how Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Hegel is tied to his investigation into the evolution of the concept of nature through the history of Western philosophy. My basic intention is to determine whether and to what extent Merleau-Ponty evades the very charges he levies against Hegel, and my basic claim is that he does. I conclude by suggesting some parallels between Merleau-Ponty’s later thought and the account of nature in Whitehead’s process philosophy that might tell us where to seek help for developing his later, enigmatic ideas once precedents in Continental thought have been exhausted.