Merleau-Ponty and Nancy on Sense and Being

Marie-Eve Morin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. She is the author of many articles on Derrida, Heidegger, Nancy, Sartre, Latour, and Sloterdijk. She is also the author of Jean-Luc Nancy (Polity, 2012) and is the co-editor, with Peter Gratton, of The Nancy Dictionary (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) and Jean-Luc Nancy and Plural Thinking: Expositions of World, Politics, Art, and Sense (SUNY, 2012). She is editor of Continental Realism and its Discontents (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

This book performs work that has not yet been done and that is really very important in understanding French phenomenology, its legacy, and its relation to Nancy, a key contemporary thinker. Written with extraordinary rigour, it is a major contribution to thinking about philosophical materialism and realism in the wake of phenomenology and deconstruction.

• Introductioni. The Context: The Speculative Realist Challengeii. The Limits of Phenomenology: Being and Senseiii. Merleau-Ponty and Nancy: Influence and Resonancesiv. BreakdownPart I – Body1. Merleau-Ponty, Descartes and the Unreflected Life of the Bodyi. Reading Descartes: The Relation Between Reflection and the Unreflectedii. Sensing and Self-Sensing Body of the Phenomenology of Perceptioniii. The Problem of the Phenomenology of Perception: Tacit Versus Operative Cogito2. Nancy, Descartes, the Exposition of Bodies and the Extension of the Souli. Nancy’s Reading of Descartes: The Unum Quid Against the Modern Subjectii. Nancy’s Bodies: Skin, Sense, Touch3. Divergences: Unity Versus Dislocationi. Synthesis of the Body Schema or Partes extra Partes?ii. Synaesthesia or Dislocation of the Senses? Self-Touching or Touching the Outside?Part II – Thing4. Things in the Phenomenology of Perception: The Paradox of an In-Itself-for-Usi. The Order of the Phenomena: Between Being and Appearanceii. Answering the Accusation of Correlationismiii. The Limit of the Answer in the Phenomenology and the Move to Ontology5. Things After the Phenomenology: Merleau-Ponty’s Cautious Anthropomorphismi. Sartre’s Thingsii. Merleau-Ponty’s Thingsiii. Anthropomorphism as Defamiliarization6. Nancy’s Materialism and the Stonei. The Freedom of the Stone and the Creation of the Worldii. The Existence of the Stone and Its Feeling Hardiii. Materialism, Materiality, Matteriv. Thinking and ThingsPart III – Being7. Merleau-Ponty’s and Nancy’s Engagement with Heideggeri. Is Merleau-Ponty’s Late Ontology Heideggerian?ii. Merleau-Ponty Between Husserl’s Wesenschau and Heidegger’s Weseniii. Merleau-Ponty Between the Negativism of Doubt and the Positivism of Essencesiv. Merleau-Ponty’s Indirect Ontologyv. Nancy and Heidegger’s Withdrawal of Being8. Two Ontologies of Sensei. Merleau-Ponty, Écart, and the Fleshii. Narcissism and the Reversibility of the Chiasmiii. Écart as Encroachment or Separationiv. Conclusion: Two Ontologies of Sense for Our TimeNotesBibliography