Merleau‐Ponty’s Reading of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism

Southern Journal of Philosophy 57 (1):103-131 (2019)
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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore Merleau-Ponty’s ambivalent relationship with Kant’s transcendental philosophy. I begin by looking at several points of convergence between Kant and Merleau-Ponty, focusing on the affinities between Kant’s account of transcendental realism and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of objective thought. I then show how Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of Kant’s paradox of asymmetrical objects points to a parallel in Kant’s thought to Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of perception. In the second part of the paper, I show why Merleau-Ponty believes that, despite the promise of Kant’s thought, he fails to adequately escape from objective thought. After presenting the central claims of the transcendental deduction, I piece together Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of it by answering three questions: For Merleau-Ponty, how do we encounter the world prior to reflection? How is experience constituted? And what leads Kant to mischaracterise experience in his own transcendental philosophy?

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Henry Somers-Hall
Royal Holloway University of London

Citations of this work

Chapter 6 Kant, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and the Constitution of Experience.Henry Somers-Hall - 2023 - In Robert W. Luzecky & Daniel W. Smith, Deleuze and Time. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 116-135.
Kant-Bibliographie 2019.Margit Ruffing - 2021 - Kant Studien 112 (4):623-660.

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References found in this work

The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes.Maurice Merleau-Ponty - 1968 - Evanston [Ill.]: Northwestern University Press. Edited by Claude Lefort.
Meditations on First Philosophy.René Descartes - 1641/1984 - Ann Arbor: Caravan Books. Edited by Stanley Tweyman.
Critique of Pure Reason.I. Kant - 1787/1998 - Philosophy 59 (230):555-557.
Critique of Pure Reason.Immanuel Kant - 1781 - Mineola, New York: Macmillan Company. Edited by J. M. D. Meiklejohn.
The Structure of Behavior.Maurice Merleau-Ponty - 1963 - Boston,: Beacon Press (MA).

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