Merleau-Ponty's ontological reading of constitution in Phénoménologie de la perception

Elizabeth Behnke

pp. 31-50

in: Ted Toadvine, Lester Embree (eds), Merleau-Ponty's reading of Husserl, Deventer, Kluwer, 2002

Abstract

In Phénoménologie de la perception Merleau-Ponty constructs and critiques two notions of “constitution, ” both of which he ascribes to Husserl: an “intellectualist” sense that he rejects because it perpetuates a dualistic ontology of determinate being; and a “genetic” sense that is rejected on the grounds that it assumes an ultimately pre-given ontological matrix that it cannot itself provide. Thus Merleau-Ponty gives “constitution” an exclusively “metaphysical” reading, thereby occluding Husserl’s distinctive methodological sense of the term.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice

Husserl Edmund