The Return To Merleau-Ponty

It has been at least a decade since I have engaged in a deep reading of Merleau-Ponty.

My allergy to the hegemonic position of the perennial questions of the Western philosophical tradition (Plato to Kant) has kept me from this task. But visiting Ephesus has renewed my feeling for the enterprise while, at the same time, reinvigorating my conviction that Western philosophical thought requires overcoming.

Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology naturalized otherwise "mystical" intuitions in fruitful ways. My hesitation to fully embrace him is due to the fact that his technical vocabulary makes one's thinking legible only to a small coterie of specialists. At the same time, however, it also lends a certain precision to one's expressions.

This is always the dilemma...



If I stand in a grove of olive trees and ask myself "Where am I now?", does Merleau-Ponty help? Yes and no, which is reason enough to renew the acquaintance....