Abstract

The main purpose in this paper is to present the philosophical affinities among the French phenomenological philosopher, M. Merleau-Ponty, and certain oriental traditions related to a very sophisticated cognitive hermeneutics as, for instance, the Buddhism doctrine with its different schools, certain epistemic foundations of Chinese ancient cosmology and, of course, the Daoism ontogenesis and alchemical processes of corporeal transformation, insofar as both prospects, in spite of the well-known cultural and historical distances, present an position against the mechanistic or substantialist understanding of body. In this sense, it seems clear that Merleau-Ponty’s strategic critique of cognitive paradigm about the constituent subject and his philosophical alternative based on a pre-reflexive and silent experience that shows body and world as an indivisible unity, converts the carnal existence into an epistemological reference from which we can start to develop a theoretical confrontation or comparative study between his thought and key philosophical contents which belong to Eastern philosophical traditions.