Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy)

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy)

by David Morris (Author), David Morris (Author)

Synopsis

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology shows how the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from its very beginnings, seeks to find sense or meaning within nature, and how this quest calls for and develops into a radically new ontology.

David Morris first gives an illuminating analysis of sense, showing how it requires understanding nature as engendering new norms. He then presents innovative studies of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, revealing how these early works are oriented by the problem of sense and already lead to difficulties about nature, temporality, and ontology that preoccupy Merleau-Ponty's later work. Morris shows how resolving these difficulties requires seeking sense through its appearance in nature, prior to experience-ultimately leading to radically new concepts of nature, time, and philosophy.

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology makes key issues in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy clear and accessible to a broad audience while also advancing original philosophical conclusions.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 320
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Published: 30 Oct 2018

ISBN 10: 0810137925
ISBN 13: 9780810137929

Media Reviews
Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology is simply a great book. Morris's accounts of life and nature are creative and deeply philosophical. I might be exaggerating a little when I say this, but I think this is the best Merleau-Ponty book I have ever read. --Leonard Lawlor, author of Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy
This scintillating text offers two books for the price of one: not only does it offer an insightful and innovative reading of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, early and late, but it also establishes David Morris as an original voice to be heard in its own right. The reader is provided with a rich panoply of new ways of finding sense embedded in experience and in being, and all this in the context of a phenomenology of nature, a new model of 'development' of life and the cosmos, and an inaugural notion of templacement that surpasses earlier discussions of space and time and is shown to be the foundation of a radically new ontology. The result is a tour de force in which contemporary immunology and biology and cosmic theory join forces with Merleau-Ponty's final search for 'wild being.' This is one of the most exciting, intellectually engaging, and profound books of our time. --Edward S. Casey, author of The World on Edge
This book is unique as a contribution both to Merleau-Ponty scholarship and to a renewed phenomenological ontology. Drawing on contemporary life sciences and cosmology, it presents an organic and dynamic view of how meaning and a factual order arise and appear in being, space, and time. Hardly ever has the plea for a radical transcendental empiricism, instead of traditional forms of subjectivism, been made so concretely and convincingly. --Rudolf Bernet, author of Force, Drive, Desire: A Philosophy of Psychoanalysis
Author Bio
David Morris is a professor of philosophy at Concordia University. He is the author of The Sense of Space.