Abstract
This chapter argues that Maurice Blanchot made a distinctive contribution to philosophical thought that is irreducible to the question of influence but cannot be fully understood apart from his relationship to the phenomenological tradition. The chapter compares Blanchot’s conception of reversal to what can be found in Heidegger, but also emphasizes the role that classical myth and modern literature perform in his phenomenological approach to texts. Blanchot’s poetics is discussed in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of visibility and then contrasted to the classicism that underlies Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The conclusion argues that Blanchot’s poetics contains a view of beginnings that clarifies the value of phenomenology as a method of inquiry.
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Melaney, W.D. (2011). Blanchot’s Inaugural Poetics: Visibility and the Infinite Conversation. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Phenomenology/Ontopoiesis Retrieving Geo-cosmic Horizons of Antiquity. Analecta Husserliana, vol 110. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1691-9_35
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