Abstract

But for us who are fifty years removed from these courses, they present in the clearest way possible what requirements we must still follow in order to determine what an origin or principle is. Indeed, “principle” is a word that Merleau-Ponty uses repeatedly in the courses. For Merleau-Ponty, the principle must be conceived neither as positive nor negative, neither as infinite nor finite, neither as internal nor external, neither as objective nor subjective; it can be thought neither through idealism nor realism, neither through finalism nor mechanism, neither through determinism nor indeterminism, neither through humanism nor naturalism. What makes this principle so problematic for Merleau-Ponty is that none of these concepts and modes of thought can grasp the “residue,” or in more accessible terms, the “contingency” in which nature consists. Nature is contingent insofar as it is not a “reservoir” of possibilities. Instead, nature is hollowed out, a hollow that nevertheless presents in relief what is necessary for nature to be filled in. Even more, nature is, for Merleau-Ponty, eternally hollowed out, which gives it the sense of inertia, solidity, obstinancy, a sense of life as eternally self-regenerating, even a sense of “eternal return”. Here, however, we would have to raise a question: Does this conception of nature or life truly take account of finitude understood through the phenomenon of death? Unlike Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, it seems, has no answer to this question.-Leonard Lawlor, The University of Memphis.