A Merleau-Pontian Critique of Sartrean Philosophy of Negation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/jffp.2024.1051Keywords:
being, consciousness, dialectical ontology, negativity, nothingness, positivity, situatedness, subjectivityAbstract
The phenomenological ontologies of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty have often been discussed in comparison to one another. Often, a Merleau-Pontian critique of Sartre, based on subjectivity, has been given. In doing so, both Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s views on freedom, facticity, the body, and the Other has been discussed in great detail. Despite all of this, however, not much emphasis has been given to their understanding of negativity in its relation to the construction of Self as the Being-in-the-world of human-reality. Accordingly, this article will focus on the relationship between subjectivity and negativity in Sartre and Merleau-Ponty with a specific emphasis on Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Sartre’s philosophy of negation. First, the article will expand on Sartre’s philosophy of negation and explain how he conceives the experience of nothingness as the foundation of subjectivity. Later, it will develop a Merleau-Pontian critique of Sartrean philosophy of negation (a) by claiming that Sartrean negativity degenerates into pure and absolute positive of the Cartesian duality, and most importantly, (b) by showing how Merleau-Ponty constructs a new dialectical ontology of Self, based on the world-as-me; a being that is seen as flesh.
References
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De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Translated by Howard Madison Parshley. London: Jonathan Cape Thirty Bedford Square, 1953. First published 1949.
Direk, Zeynep. Ontologies of Sex: Philosophy in Sexual Politics. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2020.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968. First published 1964.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. First published 1945.
Meyers, Mark. “Liminality and the Problem of Being-in-the-world: Reflections on Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.” Sartre Studies International 14, no. 1 (2008): 78-105. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23511132
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Sarah Richmond. New York: Routledge, 2018. First published 1943.
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