Abstract
In the preface to Signs, Maurice Merleau-Ponty explicitly directs us to think history according to the model of langage (parlance) or of being. We are, he says, “in the field of history as in the field of parlance or of being.”1 That is, we are born into history as we are born into both parlance and perceptual being. These fields are neither chaotic nor fully determinate. Rather they all both manifest previously established structures and at the same time provide the resources and opportunities required for us to make our own distinctive contributions.
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Notes
Merleau-Ponty, Signs, tr. by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwest-ern University Press, 1964), 20. My modification of McCleary's translation. Hereafter S.
Other special cases are specific religions, specific arts, and specific educational enterprises.
See in this connection Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, tr. by Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 7-10, 71-78, and 90-100. Hereafter cited as CGL.
Merleau-Ponty, Adventures of the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 103. Hereafter cited as AD.
S, 218-219. For another version of this relation with a notably different emphasis, see Bertrand de Jouvenel, Sovereignty, tr. by J. F. Huntington (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), 137-138. Hereafter cited as Sov.
S, 274-275. See also Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, tr. by John O'Neill (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), xxxii-xxxiii. Hereafter cited as HT. It is no surprise that Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles, and Thucydides could not teach their sons to be statesmen. See Plato, Meno, tr. by G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 26-27.
S, 276.
Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, tr. by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 143. Hereafter cited as SNS.
S, 302-303. As de Saussure says, “In language there are only differences.” CGL, 120.
According to de Saussure, the synchronic laws of language report states of affairs but are not imperative. Thus, the state of affairs is precarious. CGL, 92.
S, 336. See also 5, 35, where Merleau-Ponty says, “History never confesses, not even her lost illusions, but neither does she dream of them again.”
S, 323-324.
AD, 23. See the useful, related remarked by de Jouvenel, Sov., 105-107.
S, 35.
S, 328, 335. See also Merleau-Ponty, “Pour La Vérité,” Les Temps Modernes, 1945, 600.
AD, 124. See also James Miller, History and Human Existence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 209-212.
AD, 143.
Merleau-Ponty, Themes from the Lectures at College de France, 1952-1960, tr. by John O'Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 40-41.
S., 349. See also SNS, 152 for an earlier version of this insight of Mer-leau-Ponty's. In another related context, Merleau-Ponty has said: “The presence of the individual in the institution and of the institution in the individual is evident in the case of linguistic change. It is often the wearing down of a form which suggests to us a new way of using the means of discrimination which are present in the language at a given time …. The contingent fact, taken over by the will to expression, becomes a new means of expression which takes its place, and has a lasting sense in the history of this language” (Merleau-Ponty, In Praise of Philosophy, tr. by John Wild and James Edie [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963], 55.) Hereafter cited as IPP.
CGL, 77-78.
See Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, tr. by Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 183-184 and Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, tr. by James Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 134.
SNS, 143, and AD, 120, 150-151.
AD, 53, 206.
AD, 22.
AD, 225ff.
HT, xxiv-xxv.
AD, 198.
AD, 207.
AD, 226.
SNS, 148, and S, 348-349.
HT, xxxiv-xxxv. See also Sov, 18-25, 31-33.
S, 336.
Willy Brandt, et al., North-South: A Programme for Survival (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980): “It is now widely recognized that development involves a profound transformation of the entire economic and social structure. This embraces changes in production and demand as well as improvements in income distribution and employment. It means creating a more diversified economy, whose main sectors become more interdependent for supplying inputs and for expanding markets for outputs. “The actual patterns of structural transformation will tend to vary from one country to another depending on a number of factors–including resources, geography, and the skills of the population. There are therefore no golden rules capable of universal application for economic development. Each country has to exploit the opportunities open to it for strengthening its economy. Structural transformation need not imply autarky. Some countries might find it feasible to pursue inward-looking strategies that rely, at least in the early stages, on using their domestic markets. Others may diversify and expand their exports. Exports can become more fully integrated with the rest of the economy, as the domestic market comes to provide a larger base, or as export industries secure more of their inputs from local sources. Yet others will concentrate initially on distributing income more evenly in order to widen the domestic market for locally produced goods and to lay the foundations for a better balance between the rural and urban sectors. But all countries need an international environment that will be responsive to their development efforts. Herein lies part of the rationale for a new international economic order (48-49; see also 127-128).”
S, 4.
S, 35. My modification of McCleary's translation.
AD, 155.
AD, 144, 194.
S, 324, 328.
Machiavelli's weakness was that he did not have such a guideline. See S, 221-223.
S, 307.
IPP, 32.
Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, tr. by D. S. Fräser (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 29-67. Hereafter cited as HV. My conception of Mer-leau-Ponty's politics of hope is at variance with that of Barry Cooper. See his Merleau-Ponty and Marxism: From Terror to Reform (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 53-55.
HV, 60.
HV, 67.
I do not, of course, want to suggest that Merleau-Pont's politics rests upon anything like the absolute Thou which Marcel says is the “very cement which binds the whole into one (HV, 60-61).” On the nonterminal character of political conduct see Sov, 129-130.
HT, xxxv.
S, 314-318.
Perhaps the stringency of this guideline could be attenuated without loss of fidelity to Merleau-Ponty's intentions, in the following way: A policy or deed is justified if it is recognizable to everyone, at least mediately, as something that each man or state could rationally endorse being carried out by someone, even if not by oneself. Thus A, who cannot immediately approve of B's policy or deed, can approve of Cs policies and deeds even when these latter involve an endorsement of the performance of B that A cannot directly accept. Through and only through the acceptability to A of Cs policies and deeds is B's policy or deed made acceptable to A. Such an attenuation would forestall the fault of legitimating too little. For example, if nations A and B are at odds, then the rulers of both of them might be able to endorse a refusal by nation C to take sides, even though each of them would be strengthened by C's support.
HT, xxxiv-xxxv and SNS, 152.
AD, 196.
AD, 29.
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Dauenhauer, B.P. (1991). Merleau-Ponty's Political Thought: Its Nature and Its Challenge. In: Elements of Responsible Politics. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3564-1_3
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