Merleau-Ponty: The Triumph of Dialectics Over Structuralism

Abstract

It is truly astonishing that not one of the numerous commentators on the thought of Merleau-Ponty, not even those who have been concerned with his philosophy of language, have given much serious attention to what seems to me to be the pivotal work in his development, namely The Prose of the World. This work is, of course, devoted primarily to the philosophy of language, which was not at all stages of his development at the center of his philosophical investigations. Nevertheless, from the years 1949 to roughly 1959 it was the question of language which was at the center of his preoccupations. Moreover, if we go back to the period shortly after he took up teaching at the Sorbonne in Paris, and when he presented his candidacy for the chair of philosophy at theCollège de France, he described the work on this book, The Prose of the World, as being an integral part, perhaps the most important part, of the future culmination of his philosophical career.¹