Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of Existential Politics

Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of Existential Politics PDF Author: Kerry H. Whiteside
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400859735
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Kerry H. Whiteside presents the political theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), one of France's best-known twentieth-century philosophers. Whiteside argues that Merleau-Ponty's objective in his political writings was to make existentialism into the foundation for a philosophically consistent mode of political thinking. This study discusses the inadequacies Merleau-Ponty found in the traditional philosophies of empiricism and idealism, and then examines the subject-object dualism that he believed deprived previous forms of existentialism of political significance. Whiteside shows how Merleau-Ponty overcame these problems by grounding political reasoning in a theory of consciousness that emphasized both its individuality and its need for socially created meaning. After explaining Merleau-Ponty's modifications of the views of Sartre, Aron, and others, the book investigates how he applied his political theory in editorial exchanges with Communists and liberals. Throughout this study, Whiteside traces and criticizes the changes in the philosopher's concept of Marxism and points to his many ideas that bear on current controversies in political theory. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of Existential Politics

Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of Existential Politics PDF Author: Kerry H. Whiteside
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400859735
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Kerry H. Whiteside presents the political theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), one of France's best-known twentieth-century philosophers. Whiteside argues that Merleau-Ponty's objective in his political writings was to make existentialism into the foundation for a philosophically consistent mode of political thinking. This study discusses the inadequacies Merleau-Ponty found in the traditional philosophies of empiricism and idealism, and then examines the subject-object dualism that he believed deprived previous forms of existentialism of political significance. Whiteside shows how Merleau-Ponty overcame these problems by grounding political reasoning in a theory of consciousness that emphasized both its individuality and its need for socially created meaning. After explaining Merleau-Ponty's modifications of the views of Sartre, Aron, and others, the book investigates how he applied his political theory in editorial exchanges with Communists and liberals. Throughout this study, Whiteside traces and criticizes the changes in the philosopher's concept of Marxism and points to his many ideas that bear on current controversies in political theory. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics After Anti-Humanism

Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics After Anti-Humanism PDF Author: Diana Coole
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461640121
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
In this important new book, Diana Coole shows how existential phenomenology illuminates and enlivens our understanding of politics. Merleau-Ponty’s focus on embodied experience allows us to approach political life in a manner that is both critical and engaged. With breadth of vision and penetrating insight, Coole demonstrates that political questions were always central to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical project. Her examination of his complete body of work presents us with a rigorous philosophy that maintains our capacities for agency despite moving beyond a philosophy of the subject. Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics after Anti-humanism is the first major work on Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy in over two decades. Coole presents his later philosophy of flesh as the outline for a new understanding of the political, which forms the basis for reconsidering humanism after, but also through, anti-humanism. She also shows how Merleau-Ponty’s concern with contingency anticipated arguments by thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, while sustaining a robust sense of politics as the domain of collective life. The result is a philosophical analysis that speaks to our contemporary concerns in which we seek a coherent account of our actions, our environment and ourselves, such that we might become exemplary political actors within a complex and uncertain world.

The Banality of Evil

The Banality of Evil PDF Author: Bernard J. Bergen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847692101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Takes its point of departure from Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem." Focuses neither on Eichmann nor the Holocaust, but on what Bergen sees as the political and philosophical consequences of the "banality of evil." These derive from the human failure to develop the thought, will, and judgment that are necessary to prevent the kind of evil committed by the Nazis. Like Arendt, Bergen is more concerned with totalitarianism than antisemitism, often referring to her work "The Origins of Totalitarianism."

The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty

The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty PDF Author: Jon Stewart
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810115328
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 686

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Book Description
This collection of essays provides a portrait of the intellectual relationship between these two men. It addresses several points of contact and covers themes of the debate from the different periods in their shared history.

Merleau-Ponty's Existential Phenomenology and the Realization of Philosophy

Merleau-Ponty's Existential Phenomenology and the Realization of Philosophy PDF Author: Bryan A. Smyth
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1780937873
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Bringing to light the essential philosophical role of Marxism within Merleau-Ponty's reinterpretation of transcendental phenomenology, this book shows that the realization of this project hinges methodologically upon a renewed conception of the proletariat qua universal class-specifically, that it rests upon a humanist myth of incarnation which, substantiated by Merleau-Ponty's notion of 'heroism', locates an objective historical purposiveness in the habituated organism of the modern subject. Foregrounding the phenomenological priority of history over corporeality in this way, Smyth's analysis recovers the 'militant' character of Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology. It thus sheds critical new light on his early thought, and challenges some of the main parameters of existing scholarship by disclosing the intrinsic normativity of his basic methodological commitments.

Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty PDF Author: Rosalyn Diprose
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317493036
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Having initially not had the attention of Sartre or Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty's work is arguably now more widely influential than either of his two contemporaries. "Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts" presents an accessible guide to the core ideas which structure Merleau-Ponty's thinking as well as to his influences and the value of his ideas to a wide range of disciplines. The first section of the book presents the context of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, the major debates of his time, particularly existentialism, phenomenology, the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history and society. The second section outlines his major contributions and conceptual innovations. The final section focuses upon how his work has been taken up in other fields besides philosophy, notably in sociology, cognitive science, health studies, feminism and race theory.

Merleau-Ponty, Hermeneutics, and Postmodernism

Merleau-Ponty, Hermeneutics, and Postmodernism PDF Author: Thomas W. Busch
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791411391
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book opens up new dimensions in the philosophical thought of Merleau-Ponty and addresses contemporary issues concerning interpretation theory and postmodernity. In Part I the authors employ the texts of Merleau-Ponty to challenge many of assumptions that operate in the current field of hermeneutics. They find in Merleau-Ponty the outline of a hermeneutics of ambiguity that incorporates his accounts of the human body, language, and temporality in working out the concepts of interpretation, context, perspective, truth, and interpersonal transgression. Merleau-Ponty thus enters into a productive dialogue with contemporary thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas, Levinas, and Derrida. Part II engages Merleau-Ponty with the "many voices" of postmodernism. Some of the most able Merleau-Ponty interpreters reveal the richness of his work through variant readings. Can Merleau-Ponty be construed as a postmodern thinker, or as a critic of postmodernism? To what extent can the concepts of flesh, reversibility, and ecart be made to function as deconstructive non-concepts? What can Merleau-Ponty contribute toward a postmodern politics? These essays move the discussion from Derrida to Deleuze, Foucault, and Lyotard.

Volume 9: Kierkegaard and Existentialism

Volume 9: Kierkegaard and Existentialism PDF Author: Jon Stewart
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351874217
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
There can be no doubt that most of the thinkers who are usually associated with the existentialist tradition, whatever their actual doctrines, were in one way or another influenced by the writings of Kierkegaard. This influence is so great that it can be fairly stated that the existentialist movement was largely responsible for the major advance in Kierkegaard's international reception that took place in the twentieth century. In Kierkegaard's writings one can find a rich array of concepts such as anxiety, despair, freedom, sin, the crowd, and sickness that all came to be standard motifs in existentialist literature. Sartre played an important role in canonizing Kierkegaard as one of the forerunners of existentialism. However, recent scholarship has been attentive to his ideological use of Kierkegaard. Indeed, Sartre seemed to be exploiting Kierkegaard for his own purposes and suspicions of misrepresentation and distortions have led recent commentators to go back and reexamine the complex relation between Kierkegaard and the existentialist thinkers. The articles in the present volume feature figures from the French, German, Spanish and Russian traditions of existentialism. They examine the rich and varied use of Kierkegaard by these later thinkers, and, most importantly, they critically analyze his purported role in this famous intellectual movement.

The Merleau-Ponty Reader

The Merleau-Ponty Reader PDF Author: Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810120437
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
This title offers a comprehensive view of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's work, this selection collecting in one volume the foundational essays necessary for understanding the core of this critical 20th-century philosopher's thought.

The Aesthetico-Political

The Aesthetico-Political PDF Author: Mart�n Plot
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441196633
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This study uses new arguments to reinvestigate the relation between aesthetics and politics in the contemporary debates on democratic theory and radical democracy. First, Carl Schmitt and Claude Lefort help delineate the contours of an aesthetico-political understanding of democracy, which is developed further by studying Merleau-Ponty, Ranci�re, and Arendt. The ideas of Merleau-Ponty serve to establish a general "ontological" framework that aims to contest the dominant currents in contemporary democratic theory. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, and Ranci�re share a general understanding of the political as the contingently contested spaces and times of appearances. However, the articulation of their thought leads to reconsider and explore under-theorized as well as controversial dimensions of their work. This search for new connections between the political and the aesthetic thought of Arendt and Merleau-Ponty on one hand and the current widespread interest in Ranci�re's aesthetic politics on the other make this book a unique study that will appeal to anyone who is interested in political theory and contemporary continental philosophy.