Merleau-Ponty and the Generation of Animals

Habit and embodiment in Merleau-Ponty

INTRODUCTION Merleau-Ponty (French phenomenological philosopher, born in 1908 and deceased in 1961) refers to habit in various passages of his Phenomenology of Perception as a relevant issue in his philosophical and phenomenological position. Through his exploration of this issue he explains both the pre-reflexive character that our original linkage with the world has, as well as the kind of “u...

Merleau-Ponty and the Existential Conception of Science

Merleau-ponty and the Phenomenology of the Body

By using the term ‘phenomenology’, Merleau-Ponty locates his work in the philosophical tradition effectively founded by Husserl, and implicitly endorses the latter’s opposition to scientific realism, to the view that one should accept the privileged status of the natural sciences as providing descriptions of the real nature of the world, however much these depart from our pre-scientific, common...

Stopping the Anthropological Machine: Agamben with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty

To render inoperative the machine that governs our conception of man will therefore mean … to risk ourselves in this emptiness: the suspension of suspension, Shabbat of both animal and man. (Agamben, The Open 92) In The Open, Giorgio Agamben diagnoses the history of both science and philosophy as part of what he calls the " anthropological machine " through which the human is created with and a...

Erratum on: Habit and embodiment in Merleau-Ponty

[This corrects the article on p. 542 in vol. 8, PMID: 25120448.].