The semiotic phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault

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...

Toward an Ethico-politics of the Posthuman: Foucault and Merleau-ponty

We live in an age where rapid developments in technologies and environmental catastrophes increasingly question the limits and meaning of the human and human “agency,” the inevitability of human “progress,” and the capacity of humanity to control its world. In response, there have emerged a number of different ontological ideas of the “posthuman.” These continue a critical history emerging from...

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

Faubion MICHEL FOUCAULT POWER