Maurice Merleau-Ponty e la verità del naturalismo

Diego D'Angelo

pp. 129-142

in: Michela Summa, Pietro Giuffrida (eds), Naturalism and subjectivity, Metodo 1 (2), 2013.

Abstract

In this text I shall try to understand what Merleau-Ponty means when he says that there is a ‘truth of naturalism’. Although this formulation apparently assumes different meanings in different periods of his philosophical production, at a closer look it discloses a unitary view on the problem of naturalism. In order to grasp such a unitary account, philosophy needs a more complex definition of ‘nature’, which is neither materialistic nor pantheistic. Philosophy needs a definition capable of bringing about a more original sense of nature as ‘primordial being’, that is, as an always already meaningful nature that has not a ‘mind’ at the opposite, rather being the source of every correlation. This view can help philosophy and science, as I shall argue, in making sense of the scientific discourse about consciousness and the mental without falling pray to either Cartesian dualism or other unwanted presuppositions.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice