Merleau-Ponty and the Essence of Nature
A Return to Elemental Symbolism
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:31st Aug '24
Should be back in stock very soon
Taylor Knight reveals the way in which phenomenology initiates a return to ontology construed through a dialectical relationship between being and element. Within phenomenology’s return to the elemental, Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy is a key locus, opening critical paths forward into an ontology for the ecological age. With reference to his phenomenological forebears - Heidegger, Husserl, Levinas - his non-phenomenological influences - Bachelard, Schelling, Freud - and his dialogue with Greek thought - Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle – Knight shows what is authentically new in Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology.
Knight works against the grain both of readings of Merleau-Ponty as a forerunner of Derrida or Foucault, and of the idea that many of his claims are strongly implicit already in the work of Husserl. Merleau-Ponty is instead situated in a line from Plato through some speculative idealism, as a philosopher turning endlessly around the knot of phenomenality and what it occludes. -- Jeffrey Bloechl, Arthur J. Fitzgibbons Professor, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Boston College
A truly creative extension of Merleau-Ponty’s unfinished ontology. -- Isaac Frisby, Durham University * International Journal of Philosophical Studies *
ISBN: 9781399529891
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
248 pages