Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity

by Jack Reynolds

Overview

While there have been many essays devoted to comparing the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with that of Jacques Derrida, there has been no sustained book-length treatment of these two French philosophers. Additionally, many of the essays presuppose an oppositional relationship between them, and between phenomenology and deconstruction more generally.

Jack Reynolds systematically explores their relationship by analyzing each philosopher in terms of two important and related issues-embodiment and alterity. Focusing on areas with which they are not commonly associated (e.g., Derrida on the body and Merleau-Ponty on alterity) makes clear that their work cannot be adequately characterized in a strictly oppositional way. Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity proposes the possibility of a Merleau-Ponty-inspired philosophy that does not so avowedly seek to extricate itself from phenomenology, but that also cannot easily be dismissed as simply another instantiation of the metaphysics of presence. Reynolds argues that there are salient ethico-political reasons for choosing an alternative that accords greater attention to our embodied situation.

As the first full-length monograph comparing the philosophers, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida will interest scholars and students in European philosophy and teachers of courses dealing with deconstruction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821415924
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	08/18/2004
Series:	Series In Continental Thought , #32
Edition description:	1
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jack Reynolds is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Tasmania. He is the continental area editor of the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and editor of Acumen Press’s Major Movements in Modern Thought Series. He is the coeditor of Understanding Derrida and author of the forth-coming Understanding Existentialism.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	List of Abbreviations	ix
	Introduction	xi
Part 1	Embodiment
1	Merleau-Ponty, the Body-Subject, and the Disciplining of Reflection	3
2	The Deconstruction of Oppositions: Speech-Writing, but Why Not Mind-Body?	26
3	The Later Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and the Metaphysics of Presence	55
4	Habituality and Undecidability: A Comparison of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida on the Decision	83
Part 2	The Other
5	Solipsism and the Master-Slave Dialectic: An Onto-Ethical Dissonance between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty	105
6	Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and the Alterity of the Other	124
7	The Other of Derridean Deconstruction: Levinas, Phenomenology, and the Problem of Responsibility	150
8	Possible and Impossible, Self and Other, and the Reversibility of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida	173
	Notes	197
	Bibliography	219
	Index	231

Editorial Reviews

It is remarkable that the relation between Merleau-Ponty and Derrida, two of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century, has received so little attention. Jack Reynolds’s book makes a significant contribution toward filling this gap.”—Steven Crowell, author of Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning

From the Publisher