Strange Sounds: Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Dialectic

Abstract

From John Rose: Greg Wolff’s article, “Strange Sounds: Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Dialectic,” tackles head-on the problem of whether an individual’s consciousness of another can ever reach the perspective of another person. In short, the fundamental question that motivates his philosophizing is, “Can we ever genuinely reach the other person?” In the best methodological tradition of contemporary, continental philosophy, Mr. Wolff begins with the point of friction between two recent French thinkers who have already tackled the topic: Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Those unfamiliar with this method of working through philosophical texts in pursuit of one’s own reflective questions should note the compelling and lucid way in which Wolff focuses his reader’s attention on the juxtaposition of these two philosopher’s on his article’s thesis. However, one must not think that Wolff’s rigorous and focused reading of the text is the sole reason for its worthiness. Mr. Wolff takes the discussions of these philosophers further in terms of his own experiences with the topic. Citing his own concerns with solipsism—the philosophical version of narcissism in which one believes that oneself is the only existing thing—Wolff explores his own sense for the points of contact with the truly otherness of the other person: in music, in language, in art, and in personal relationships. As it should be, Wolff’s article becomes an example of the relationship to the Other that he explores in his philosophical reflections. The philosophers themselves become the Other whom Wolff reaches as he transcends his own perspective. In putting his own questions to the others, Mr. Wolff reaches them, not as lifeless precursors and concepts, but as others who reach the experience of the Other.