On the motivations for Merleau-Ponty’s ontological research

This paper attempts to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s later work by tracing a hitherto overlooked set of concerns that were of key consequence for the formulation of his ontological research. I argue that his ontology can be understood as a response to a set of problems originating in reflections on the intersubjective use of language in dialogue, undertaken in the early 1950s. His study of dialogue disclosed a structure of meaning-formation and pointed towards a theory of truth (both recurring ontological topics) that post-Phenomenology premises could not account for. A study of dialogue shows that speakers’ positions are interchangeable, that speaking subjects are active and passive in varying degrees, and that the intentional roles of subjects and objects are liable to shift or ‘transgress’ themselves. These observations anticipate the concepts of ‘reversibility’ and ‘narcissism’, his later view of activity and passivity, and his later view of intentionality, and sharpened the need to adopt an intersubjective focus in ontological research

The Paradox of a Gesture, Enlarged by the Distension of Time: Merleau-Ponty and Lacan on a Slow-Motion Picture of Henri Matisse Painting

In his lecture series The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964), Lacan refers to a “delightful example” that Merleau-Ponty gives in his Book Signes (1960). Lacan describes it as a “strange slow-motion film in which one sees Matisse painting.” This is a scene from the documentary entitled A Great French Painter, Henri Matisse, by director François Campaux, a 16mm black and white film shot in 1946. Merleau-Ponty points, as Lacan puts it, to “the paradox of that gesture which, enlarged by the distension of time, enables us to imagine the most perfect deliberation on each of these strokes.” In fact, Merleau-Ponty underscores that this is an illusion, due only to the technique of the slow motion picture. In this paper I will present the different ways in which Lacan and Merleau-Ponty refer to the slow motion picture of Matisse painting. I will do so in order to consider, comparatively, the ways in which Merleau-Ponty and Lacan define the gesture in reference to film technologies and to the process of subjectification. Both of them refer to the gesture in order to find a new balance in the relationship between subject, rationality and media technology. And it is exactly at this site where the question of an ethics of gesture appears

Phenomenology is not phenomenalism. Is there such a thing as phenomenology of sport?

Background: The application of the philosophical mode of investigation called “phenomenology” in the context of sport. Objective: The goal is to show how and why the phenomenological method is very often misused in the sportrelated research. Methods: Interpretation of the key texts, explanation of their meaning. Results: The confrontation of concrete sport-related texts with the original meaning of the key phenomenological notions shows mainly three types of misuse – the confusion of phenomenology with immediacy, with an epistemologically subjectivist stance (phenomenalism), and with empirical research oriented towards objects in the world. Conclusions: Many of the discussed authors try to take over the epistemological validity of phenomenology for their research, which itself is not phenomenological, and it seems that this is because they lack such a methodological foundation. The authors believe that an authentically phenomenological analysis of sport is possible, but it must respect the fundamental distinctions that differentiate phenomenology from other styles of thinking

A Hierarchy of Deaths: Stem Cells, Animals and Humans Understood by Developmental Biologists.

Stem cell basic science has sparked a lot of attention because of its use of cells coming from 'destroyed' embryos. An ethnographic study conducted in two developmental biology laboratories located in India and France demonstrates that lab professionals do not see the use of these cells as controversial. What appears to be a major topic of reflection is the killing of mice. A hierarchy of deaths is delineated when biologists evoke the kind of lives at play in their science. A comparison between narrations of cell experimentations and mice sacrifices enriches a biological approach to the living through genetics, which is nonetheless performed in daily scientific practices. Laboratory workers enact other perceptions that point at being alive or having a life. They acknowledge, with personal convictions or expressions of intense affects, lives that are said to be embodied and experienced, while being hierarchised for the sake of science and dying patients. Laboratory workers' narratives of a hierarchy of deaths provide them with arguments to engage with discussions happening outside of their workplace about the handling of living materials in experimental settings

Towards a Phenomenology of Grief : insights from Merleau-Ponty

This paper shows how phenomenological research can enhance our understanding of what it is to experience grief. I focus specifically on themes in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in order to develop an account that emphasizes two importantly different ways of experiencing indeterminacy. This casts light on features of grief that are disorienting and difficult to describe, while also making explicit an aspect of experience upon which the possibility of phenomenological inquiry itself depends

Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze as interpreters of Henri Bergson

In this essay I concentrate on the relation between Deleuze's philosophy and Merleau-Ponty's. I examine the question of whether their philosophical projects are as widely divergent as Deleuze wants the reader to believe. Since explicit references to Merleau-Ponty in the work of Deleuze are rather rare, I take the detour of examining their interpretations of Henri Bergson, a philosopher they both recognized as an important source of inspiration. More specifically, I study the references to Bergson in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze that deal with difference and immanence. I show that Merleau-Ponty merely reads Bergson as a difference thinker, whereas Deleuze stresses Bergson's immanentism. However, these two positions do not exclude one another. First of all, there are many similarities with respect to which Bergsonian concepts both authors focus on and how they interpret them. Secondly, as Deleuze's own philosophy illustrates, a philosophy of difference is not incompatible with immanentism. However, there is one passage in Cinema I. The Movement-Image in which Deleuze states that there is a fundamental difference between the battle against dualism as it is fought by Bergson on the one hand, and phenomenology on the other. Since Deleuze's search for an immanent philosophy relies heavily on concepts introduced by Bergson, this passage can help to indicate to what degree the aforementioned similarities between Deleuze's and Merleau-Ponty's immanentism hold