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In this first English publication of a well-known and widely respected Italian scholar, readers will encounter the preeminent interpreter of the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty engaged in a dialogue of critical concern to contemporary philosophy. In subtle and sensitive language eminently suited to the style and substance of Merleau-Ponty's own writings, Mauro Carbone fashions four essays around a central theme-the relations of the sensible and the intelligible, and of philosophy and non-philosophy-that occupied Merleau-Ponty in his later work. An original and innovative interpretation of the ontology of Merleau-Ponty--and themselves a significant contribution to the field of Continental thought--these essays constitute a sustained exploration of what Merleau-Ponty detected, and greeted, as a "mutation within the relations of man and Being," which would provide him with the basis for a new idea of philosophy or "a-philosophy." In lucid, often elegant terms, Carbone analyzes key elements of Merleau-Ponty's thought in relation to Proust's Recherche, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, the new biology of Von Uexküll, Rimbaud's Lettre du voyant, and Heidegger's conception of "letting-be." His work clearly demonstrates the vitality of Merleau-Ponty's late revolutionary philosophy by following its most salient, previously unexplored paths. This is essential reading for any scholar with an interest in Merleau-Ponty, in the questions of embodiment, temporality and Nature, or in the possibility of philosophy today.
E-Book Content
THE T H I N K I N G OF THE SENSIBLE Merleau-Ponty's A-Philosophy
Mauro Carbone
Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois
Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois 60208-4210 Copyright © 2004 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2004. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-8101-1363-5 (cloth) ISBN 0-8101-1986-2 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available from the Library of Congress. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Contents
List of Abbreviations
1 2
ix
Preface
xiii
Acknowledgments
xix
The Time of Half-Sleep: Merleau-Ponty between Husserl and Proust
1
Ad Limina Phiiosophiae: Merleau-Ponty and the "Introduction" to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
14
3
Nature: Variations on the Theme
28
4
The Thinking of the Sensible
39
Notes
49
Selected Bibliography
75
Index
87
Abbreviations
Texts by Merleau-Ponty
All references arefirstto the original French texts, then to the English translation itTW
a
Un Inedit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty" (1952), Revue de metor physique et de morale 67, no. 4 (1962): 401-9; "An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His Work," trans. Arleen B. Dallery, in M. Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy ofPerception, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 3-11. N La Nature: Notes, cours du College de France, ed. Dominique Seglard (Paris: Seuil, 1995); Nature: Course Notes from the College de France, trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003). NC Notes des cours au College de France 1958-1959 et 1960-1961, ed. Stephanie Menase (Paris: Gallimard, 1996). The notes for the course entided "Philosophic et non-philosophie depuis Hegel" were previously published (along with the same "Presentation" by C. Lefort that appears in NQ in the journal Textures, nos. 8-9 (1974): 83-129, and nos. 10-11 (1975): 145-73. These notes appeared in Engli