Abstract
Thinking which presumes to be a sort of interrogative thinking is not satisfied with raising questions, rather it keeps questioning all the time. Trying to plunge us into a maelstrom of questions, Merleau-Ponty quotes from Claudel’s poetics, where we can read:
From time to time, a man lifts his head, sniffs, listens, considers, recognizes his position: he thinks, he sighs, and, drawing his watch from the pocket lodged against his chest, looks at the time. Where am I? and What time is it? — such is the inexhaustible question turning from us to the world.
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Notes
M. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. by A. Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 103, 121; French original: Le Visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 140, 161. Page numbers following quotations refer to these two works, hereafter cited VI (English) and VI (French).
See The Visible and the Invisible, p. 166. Fr. 61, 70f., 129, 294 and my article “Das Zerspringen des Seins” in: A. Métraux and B. Waldenfels, eds., Leibhaftige Vernunft (München: W. Fink, 1986), pp. 144–161.
See Le temps vécu (Neuchâtel 2, 1968), p. 257.
See the explication of pathological disturbances of orientation in Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), p. 112, Fr. original: p. 130.
In this sense one simply cannot put the difference “touching-touched” into the context of a logo-centric kind of self-affection as a ‘certain grammatology’ suggests. See De la grammatologie (Paris: Ed. de Minuit), p. 237.
Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt: M. Suhrkamp, 1965), p. 17.
As to the difference between ‘answer’ and ‘response’, we may distinguish between the answer I give and the act or event of response. We can respond simply by giving an answer, but also by giving no answer or by posing a counter question.
Not: “returning to it” as the English translator writes; see in French: “elle en revient”.
See the German expression: “Etwas gibt zu denken”.
See my article “Vérité à faire. Merleau-Ponty’s Question Concerning Truth” in: Philosophy Today (Summer 1991), pp. 185–194.
Concerning the idea of responsiveness, see my hints in: Ordnung im Zwielicht (Frankfurt: M. Suhrkamp, 1987), p. 41ff., 210ff.; a detailed elaboration of this idea is in preparation.
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Waldenfels, B. (1993). Interrogative Thinking: Reflections on Merleau-Ponty’s Later Philosophy. In: Burke, P., van der Veken, J. (eds) Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective. Phaenomenologica, vol 129. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1751-7_1
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