Synopses & Reviews
Combining Maurice Merleau-Ponty's course notes on Husserl's Origin of Geometry, his "Course Summary," related texts, and critical essays by each of the co-translators, this collection provides a unique and welcome glimpse both into Merleau-Ponty's nuanced reading of Husserl's famed late writings and into his persistent effort to track the very genesis of truth through the incarnate idealization of language.
In his notes, Merleau-Ponty focuses primarily on Husserl's well-known "Origin of Geometry" text from the Crisis and on another of his posthumous texts on the phenomenological role of the Earth as Earth-ground. Both of these essays lead to what Merleau-Ponty called in a working note a "transcendental history"-an analysis of a geographical inscription of history. Likewise, Merleau-Ponty is concerned in these notes with the philosophical and ontological implications of the origin of idealization, the passage from passivity to activity, the interrelation between perception and rationality--or the intertwining of nature and logos. Because of the central role these themes played in Merleau-Ponty's thought, this volume provides an important supplement to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy and his relation to Husserl for the English-speaking reader. With the translators' essays connecting Merleau-Ponty to Derrida and Levinas as well as to Husserl, the volume should become a valuable sourcebook, an indispensable stopping point on a scholar's journey into the thought of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Levinas.
Synopsis
Combining Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 1960 course notes on Edmund Husserl's "The Origin of Geometry," his course summary, related texts, and critical essays, this collection offers a unique and welcome glimpse into both Merleau-Ponty's nuanced reading of Husserl's famed late writings and his persistent effort to track the very genesis of truth through the incarnate idealization of language.
Synopsis
Combining Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 1960 course notes on Edmund Husserl's "The Origin of Geometry," his course summary, related texts, and critical essays, this collection offers a unique and welcome glimpse into both Merleau-Ponty's nuanced reading of Husserl's famed late writings and his persistent effort to track the very genesis of truth through the incarnate idealization of language.
About the Author
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61) is the author of
Adventures of the Dialectic, C
onsciousness and the Acquisition of Language,
In Praise of Philosophy,
The Primacy of Perception,
The Prose of the World,
Signs,
Themes from the Lectures at the Collège de France, 1952-1960, and
The Visible and the Invisible, all published by Northwestern University Press.
Leonard Lawlor is a professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis. He is the author of Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology and Imagination and Chance: The Difference between the Thought of Ricoeur and cotranslator of Jean Hyppolite's Logic and Existence. He is also the coeditor of the annual Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty.
Bettina Bergo is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy at Duquesne University. She is the author of Levinas between Ethics and Politics: For the Beauty that Adorns Earth, translator of Levinas's Of God Who Comes to Mind, and cotranslator of Levinas's God, Death, and Time.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Verflectung: The Triple Significance of Merleau-Ponty's Course Notes on Husserl's "The Origin of Geometry"
Leonard Lawlor
Editor's Note
Abbreviations
Part 1. Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
1. Resumé of the Course: Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology
2. Course Notes: Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology
Part 2. "The Origin of Geometry" and Related Texts
Edmund Husserl
3. The Origin of Geometry
4. Foundational Investigations of the Phenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: The Originary Ark, the Earth, Does Not Move
5. The World of the Living Present and the Constitution of the Surrounding World that Is Outside the Flesh
Afterword
Philosophy as Perspectiva Artificialis: Merleau-Ponty's Critique of Husserlian Constructivism
Bettina Bergo
Glossary of German Terms
Index