Abstract
Despite the claim by contemporary commentators that Merleau-Ponty ignores the transcendental perspective of Husserlian phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty’s final essay on Husserl, “Le Philosophe et son ombre,” is engaged in reformulating the relation between the transcendental and the mundane. The necessity for this reformulation lies in his reconsideration of the Cartesianism underlying his earlier appropriation of the phenomenological method. Merleau-Ponty ‘s later formulation of the reduction, I contend, is a historical retrieval of Platonic dialectic by way of a re-reading of the myth of the cave.
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Reference
Lester Embree, “Foreword,” in An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology,ed. Rudolf Bernet, lso Kern, and Eduard Marbach (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993), xi.
Husserl, Beilage XXVIII, in Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenchaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie,Husserliana, vol 6, ed. W. Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976) [cited hereafter as Hua VI]; “Denial of Scientific Philosophy. Necessity of Reflection. The Reflection [Must Be] Historical. How is History Required?”, Appendix IX, in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,trans. David Can (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 391 [cited hereafter as Crisis].
Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 203; Signs,trans. Richard McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 160 [cited hereafter as S, with French preceding English pagination].
Paul Ricoeur, “Husserl’s Ideas II: Analyses and Problems” in Husserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology,trans. Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 67. See also Ricoeur’s explicit remarks about the distinction between transcendental and existential phenomenological approaches on 43, 48, and 52. This essay first appeared as “Analyses et problèmes dans ‘Ideen II’ de Husserl,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale,n. 56 (October—December, 1951): 357–94, and n. 57 (January—March, 1952): 1–16.
It bears mentioning both that Merleau-Ponty had attended the original “Paris Lectures” and that Méditations cartésiennes (trans. Gabrielle Pfeiffer and Emmanuel Levinas [Paris: Armand Collin, 1931 1) remained the only major text by Husserl to appear in French until the 1950 publication of Paul Ricoeur’s translation of Husserl’s Ideen I (in the Gallimard series directed by Merleau-Ponty and Sartre).
Merleau-Ponty’s earliest published references to Husserl emphasize precisely this sharp distinction between transcendental and mundane analyses, as I have indicated in “MerleauPonty’s Reading of Husserl: A Chronological Overview” (Appendix to this volume).
Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), viii; Phenomenology ofPerception,trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962; trans. rev. 1981), xiii, my emphasis [cited hereafter as PhP, with French preceding English pagination].
Merleau-Ponty is distancing himself here from the views of Gaston Berger. See Aron Gurwitsch’s discussion of Berger in The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), e.g., 183: “Phenomenology, as Berger has clearly seen, does not recognize any other philosophical problems except those concerning meaning and signification.”
The influence on this discussion of Eugen Fink’s famous 1933 Kantstudien article, “Die phänomenologische Philosophie Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik,” cited on the same page, is clear, especially in Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation of Fink’s criticisms of critical philosophy. The English translation of Fink’s essay, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism,” can be found in The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critical Readings,ed. R. O. Elveton (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), 73–147.
Compare this point with the criticisms of Cartesianische Meditationen in Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible,ed. Claude Lefort (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 171–2; The Visible and the Invisible,trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 225–6 [cited hereafter as VI, with French preceding English pagination].
This characterization is made by Jean Hyppolite at Merleau-Ponty’s presentation of the thesis of Phénoménologie de la perception to the Société française de philosophie, “Le Primat de la perception et ses conséquences philosophiques,” Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie,n. 41 (1947), 149; “The Primacy of Perception and its Philosophical Consequences,” in The Primacy of Perception,ed. James Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 39 [cited hereafter as PrP, with French preceding English pagination].
See Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer’s “Translator’s Introduction” to Husserl, Ideas II (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), xvi.
This is entailed not only by Merleau-Ponty’s stated intention of evoking Husserl’s impensé (S 202/160) but also by his admission in his earlier lecture course that this text could not be coherently explicated and that Husserl would have resisted his interpretation (See Merleau-Ponty, La Nature,ed. Dominique Séglard [Paris: Seuil, 1995], 104, 112).
Ludwig Landgrebe, “Seinsregionen und regionale Ontologien in Husserls Phänomenologie,” Studium Generale 9 (1956), 316; “Regions of Being and Regional Ontologies in Husserl’s Phenomenology,” in The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, trans. Donn Welton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981 ), 155–6.
Thomas Seebohm has more recently expressed the view that a viable transcendental phenomenology must purify itself of Husserl’s metaphysical language. See, e.g., “The Apodicticity of Absence,” in Derrida and Phenomenology,ed. William McKenna and J. Claude Evans (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), esp. 186–7, and his essay in the current volume.
For Merleau-Ponty’s recollection of this phrase in the context here under discussion, see his criticisms of de Waelhens’ presentation in Husserl. Cahiers de Royaumont, Philosophie N. III ( Paris: Minuit, 1959 ), 157–9.
Perhaps it is significant that Merleau-Ponty’s thesis on Plotinus in satisfaction of the requirements for the Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures, now lost, had been written under Bréhier. See Theodore Geraets, Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendantale: La Genèse de la philosophie de Maurice Merleau-Ponty jusqu’à la Phénoménologie de la perception ( The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971 ), 5.
Husserl, “Nachwort,” Ideen III, Husserliana, vol 5, ed. Marly Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), 139; “Epilogue,” in Ideas II, 406. See also Husserl, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin Lauer ( New York: Harper and Row, 1965 ), 76.
Merleau-Ponty, Les Sciences de l’homme et la phénoménologie (Paris: Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1975), 67; “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man,” in The Primacy of Perception,trans. James Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 89 [cited hereafter as SHP, with French preceding English pagination]. Merleau-Ponty is also aware, of course, that Husserl would reject the characterization of his thought as dialectical, cf. S 196/156.
Merleau-Ponty, Résumés de cours (Collège de France, 1952–1960) (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 82; “Themes from the Lectures at the Collège de France, 1952–1960,” trans. John O’Neill, in In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 125 [cited hereafter as RC, with French preceding English pagination].
Husserl aux limites de la phénoménologie,“ ed. Franck Robert, in Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours sur L’Origine de la géométrie de Husserl,ed. Renaud Barbaras (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), 11–92 [cited hereafter as HLP]; Merleau-Ponty, Husserl at the Limits ofPhenomenology,trans. Len Lawlor with Bettina Bergo (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). My thanks to Professor Lawlor for making available to me a draft of his translation.
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Toadvine, T. (2002). Leaving Husserl’s Cave? The Philosopher’s Shadow Revisited. In: Toadvine, T., Embree, L. (eds) Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 45. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9944-3_4
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