Abstract

This essay aims to shed new light on Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology through the analysis of the problem of incommensurable, by taking into consideration Gaetano Chiurazzi’s work, Dynamis. Ontologia dell’incommensurabile. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of expression is assumed as the reading key of this comparison: it allows to connect the theme of incommensurability (considered in the first part) both to the problem of history and of intersubjective relationship (analyzed in the second part), and to the fundamental problem of perception (third part). In particular, the analysis of the concept of expression will stress the ontological value of the phenomenological description of perception, pointing out a particular affinity between the ontology of incommensurable and the phenomenological approach. Therefore, the discovery of incommensurability and the phenomenological method will be interpreted as two different starting points for one and the same path, which leads to a non-substantialist and relational conception of Being. Rather than providing a new interpretation of this definition of Being, this comparison aims to make it clearer and better understandable, by underlining some of its essential aspects. In particular, I will consider the possibility to interpret consciousness and the subject as expressive events, analyzing the philosophical consequences of this definition.