Merleau-Ponty on silence and the work of philosophy
pp. 272-288
in: Hugh J. Silverman, Algis Mickunas, Alphonso Lingis, Theodore Kisiel (eds), The horizons of continental philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1988Abstract
Philosophy's intrinsic need for self-understanding, the self-interrogation of philosophical interrogation, has acquired particular urgency in our epoch of the "completion of metaphysics." It is thus not surprising that such self-questioning is central to Merleau-Ponty's effort, in The Visible and the Invisible, to "take up again, deepen, and clarif"his own earlier labors from the point of view of ontology.1 Whereas the scientific mode of interrogation neglects such self-questioning, and while (as Merleau-Ponty undertakes to show) even the philosophies of reflection, the Sartrean dialectic, and transcendental phenomenology still involve a "blind spot" in this regard, Merleau-Ponty seeks to radicalize this dimension of questioning.
