Abstract
Through much of his career, Merleau-Ponty was concerned both with the topic of language and with the topic of politics. But he himself never explicitly connected these two strands of thought. Nonetheless, at least one central link binds these strands together and, in so doing, strengthens each of them. This link is provided by his recognition of the importance of the phenomenon of silence.
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Notes
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, tr. by Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962). Hereafter cited as PP.
Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. by Claude Lefort, tr. by Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). Hereafter cited as VI.
See Jacques Taminiaux, Le regard et Vexcedent (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 90-115. Hereafter cited as RE.
See my Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance (Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press, 1980), Chapter 3.
Merleau-Ponty, Vie Prose of the World, ed. by Claude Lefort, tr. by John O'Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 19734), p. 36. Hereafter cited as PW.
Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, ed. by James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 134. Hereafter cited as POP.
Merleau-Ponty, Signs, tr. by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964). Hereafter cited as S.
“Now if we rid our minds of the ideal that our language is the translation or cipher of an original text, we shall see that the idea of complete expression is nonsensical, and that all language is indirect or allusive-that is, if you wish, silence (S, 43).”
S, 138.
Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind” in POP. Hereafter cited as EM.
See also Merleau-Ponty, “The War Has Taken Place,” in Sense and Non-Sense, tr. by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: North-western University Press, 1964), 147. Hereafter cited as SNS.
EM, 269.
S., 109-110.
Albert Rabil, Jr., Merleau-Ponty: Existentialist of the Social World (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1967) 135.
PP, 106-132 and 182-190; PW, 78.
VI, 101-104.
Speaking of the painter, Merleau-Ponty says: “This unhearing historicity-…does not imply that the painter does not know what he wants. It does imply that what he wants is beyond the means and goals at hand and commands from afar all our useful activity (EM, 285).
I owe this insight to Gabriel Marcel. See his The Mystery of Being, tr. by G. S. Fräser (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960) Vol. I, 137. Merleau-Ponty himself speaks of a wild world (un monde sauvage) and a wild spirit (un esprit sauvage). See S., 180-181.
Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, tr. by John O'Neill (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). Hereafter cited as HT; and Merleau-Ponty, Adventures of the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). Hereafter cited as AD.
HT, xxxvi-xxxvix: “There is no line between good people and the rest, and … in war, the most honorable causes prove themselves by means that are not honorable.” HT, xxxix, fn. 17.
HT, 164.
HT, 164.
HT, 150.
AD, 88-91, and 206-207.
AD, 90-91.
HT, xlii.
AD, 150-153. “But if there is neither an objective proof of the revolution nor a sufficient speculative criterion, there is a test of the revolution and a very clear practical criterion: the proletariat must have access to political life and to management (AD, 153).”
AD, 56-57, 204ff.
HT, 150.
AD, 203-233.
AD, 196-197.
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Dauenhauer, B.P. (1991). One Central Link Between Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Language and His Political Thought. In: Elements of Responsible Politics. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3564-1_2
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