Politics

pp. 86-112

in: William Hamrick, An existential phenomenology of law, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

Merleau-Ponty never wrote a systematic, coherent politics any more than he did an ethics. This is to say, first, that his own political views changed substantially throughout the course of his philosophical career, some of the details of which we have already charted in the previous chapter. Second, it is also the case that much of what he said at the end of his published remarks on politics failed to answer important questions raised earlier on. We have already seen one example of this fact (III.2) in connection with the possible justifiable role of violence for achieving political ends.