Abstract
Emmanuel Lévinas points out that there is not “the Other” in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty.1 Even Merleau-Ponty’s intersubjectivity theory reduces “the Other” (L’Autre) into “the Same (Le Même)”. Jean-François Lyotard says also that there is no “Absolute Other” in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and his theory does not cross over the framework of “unitary philosophy” (philosophie unitaire) of occidental metaphysics.2 Although Phenomenology of Perception (1945) considers that we live a solipsism, it integrates at last “the Other” into a perceptual and pre-nominal horizon where oneself and “the Other” cannot be discriminated. Even the conception of relationship would be eliminated from such a pre-nominal horizon where the difference between oneself and the Other is abstracted. From this point of view, it is impossible to draw out Lévinas’ notion of the Absolute Other that is dissymmetrical to the Self.
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Notes
Emmanuel Lévinas, Totalité et infini (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1961), pp. 180–182.
Emmanuel Lévinas, “Note sur Merleau-Ponty”, in Hors sujet (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1987), pp. 143–153.
Jean-François Lyotard, Discours figurés (Paris: Klinsieck, 1978), p. 19.
Mr. Wataru Hiromatus calls it “the theory of gathered subjectivity”, “Merleau-Ponty and the philosophy of inter-subjectivity”, in Merleau-Ponty (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1983),
Mr. Tetsuya Takahashi calls it “theology of communion” (Gyakkô no Logos (Tokyo: Mirai-sha, 1992)).
This manuscript is one of the manuscripts of the latter half of the 1940’s (1946–1949). These manuscripts are not open to the public. There is a transcription by Mr. Kerry Whiteside (unpublished), and his work based on this transcription (Kerry H. Whiteside, Merleau-Ponty and The Foundation for an Existential Politics (Princeton University Press, 1988)).
These manuscripts are written in very small letters or typed over 363 sheets of paper. Merleau-Ponty titled almost all articles. According to the content or the condition of preservation, the period of writing of these manuscripts is supposed to be after the publication of Phenomenology of Perception in 1945 and before his appointment to the position of Professor of Sorbonne University in 1949. During this period Merleau-Ponty taught at the Ecole normale and the University of Lyon and at the same time he was practically the chief editor of “Les Temps Modernes.” According to these two fields of action, these manuscripts will be divided into two sections of research: philosophical problems especially the notion of perception, and the politics and history. The latter are also classified into researches into Hegel and Marx, and that of the political aspect of the existentialism.
De Waelhens points out that the argument about the Other in Phenomenology of Perception was developed always in opposition to Sartre’s argument in “Being and Nothingness” (A. de Waelhens, Une philosophie de l ambiguité, p. 24sq.). But Merleau-Ponty did not cite his name in Phenomenology of Perception.
Shoichi Matsuba, “L’ambiguité de la liberté — une étude sur le manuscrit de Merleau-Ponty ‘La liberté, en particulier chez Leibniz’”, Recherches sur la philosophie et le langage, N° 15, juin 1993.
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Matsuba, S. (1996). From Communion to Communication: A Study of Merleau-Ponty’s Mexican Lectures. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Life in the Glory of Its Radiating Manifestations. Analecta Husserliana, vol 48. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1602-9_27
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