Philosophy as Political Engagement: Revisiting Merleau-Ponty and Reopening the Communist Question
In this article, I revisit the work of the French political philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A colleague of Sartre's until their quarrel, he sought to combine existentialism, Marxism and phenomenology. I begin by considering why Merleau-Ponty thought it was important, in confronting the prob...
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Published in | Contemporary political theory Vol. 2; no. 3; pp. 327 - 350 |
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Main Author | |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Palgrave Macmillan
01.10.2003
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | In this article, I revisit the work of the French political philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A colleague of Sartre's until their quarrel, he sought to combine existentialism, Marxism and phenomenology. I begin by considering why Merleau-Ponty thought it was important, in confronting the problems of the present, to reconsider past ideas as well as political regimes. I also develop his distinctive methodology of dialectical engagement, his view of politics as a strategic field of forces, and his insistence that philosophy and political action are severed at our peril. In order to illustrate and flesh out all these claims, I return to Merleau-Ponty's treatment of the communist question, placing it within a broader context of his antipathy towards modern rationalism: something he found exemplified by liberal as well as communist regimes. In the course of the discussion, I consider Merleau-Ponty's critiques of Kant, Hegel and Marx as well as his ideas about political agency. However, I also allude at key points in my argument to the relevance of his thinking for our contemporary international situation. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 1470-8914 1476-9336 |
DOI: | 10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300108 |