Merleau-Ponty's Existential Phenomenology and the Realization of Philosophy

Bringing to light the essential philosophical role of Marxism within Merleau-Ponty’s reinterpretation of transcendental phenomenology, this book shows that the realization of this project hinges methodologically upon a renewed conception of the proletariat qua universal class—specifically, that it rests upon a humanist myth of incarnation which, substantiated by Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘heroism’, locates an objective historical purposiveness in the habituated organism of the modern subject.Foregrounding the phenomenological priority of history over corporeality in this way, Smyth's analysis recovers the ‘militant’ character of Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology. It thus sheds critical new light on his early thought, and challenges some of the main parameters of existing scholarship by disclosing the intrinsic normativity of his basic methodological commitments.

Taking its cues from the references to Eugen Fink and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that respectively begin and end Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, Bryan Smyth delivers a spell-binding interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s magnum opus. In particular, Smyth argues that it is the problem of method that is most definitive for Merleau-Ponty’s work, and, through an analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s use of the notion of “heroism,” he argues compellingly for the inherently political—and, specifically, Marxist—character of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. In this highly original analysis, Smyth demonstrates the rich relevance of Lukács’ Marxism, Catholic incarnationism and Binswanger’s psychology to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. The work is particularly strong for its emphasis on the themes of death, repression, class consciousness and the “tacit cogito” in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. This is an elegantly and clearly written book of essential importance to any serious student of Merleau-Ponty., By bringing Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Marx's concept of history and Saint Exupéry's account of the heroic act together with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological project, Bryan Smyth has brilliantly and possibly forever altered our way of thinking about Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Nearly everything we thought we understood in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception - the nature of pre-objective experience and intersubjectivity, the role of the tacit cogito in the phenomenology of phenomenology, the living subject as producer, the meaning of freedom - is radically reconfigured, leaving the reader breathlessly turning the pages into new world, the thought of a figure so familiar yet so completely new.

Bryan A. Smyth is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Mississippi, USA. He has also taught philosophy at McGill University and Mount Allison University, Canada and the University of Memphis, USA.