WHEN THINKING HESITATES: PHILOSOPHY AS PROSTHESIS AND TRANSFORMATIVE VISION

In this essay, I draw on Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty to interrogate what philosophy is and how it can continue to think. Though my answer is not reducible to the views of either philosopher, what joins them is an attempt to elaborate philosophy as a different way of seeing. In this light...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Southern journal of philosophy Vol. 50; no. 2; pp. 351 - 361
Main Author AL-SAJI, ALIA
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Malden, USA Blackwell Publishing Inc 01.06.2012
Southern Journal of Philosophy
Subjects
Bergson, Henri-Louis (1859-1941)
Cognition & reasoning
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908-61)
Perceptions
Philosophers
Philosophy
Time
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:In this essay, I draw on Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty to interrogate what philosophy is and how it can continue to think. Though my answer is not reducible to the views of either philosopher, what joins them is an attempt to elaborate philosophy as a different way of seeing. In this light, I propose a view of philosophy as prosthesis—as a means and a way for seeing differently. Rather than a simple tool, philosophy as prosthesis is a transformative supplement, one that our bodily perception calls for and wherein that perception is recast. Rather than a fixed or assured view, this prosthesis holds open the interval in which thinking can take place. Philosophy, I argue, must wait. It sees and thinks hesitatingly, for the temporality it inscribes is not a foreseeable development but the unfolding of life as tendency, as that which creates its own possibility as it comes into existence.
Bibliography:istex:C150159C26F98E16B5CC71D8E5401232EBE283A4
ArticleID:SJP95
ark:/67375/WNG-J9HNBLG3-5
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. She works in the areas of phenomenology, feminist theory, critical race theory, and French philosophy. She has recently published articles on Bergson's concept of life, on the uses of Husserlian phenomenology for feminist theory, and on the racialization of veiled Muslim women's bodies. She is currently completing a monograph on the temporality of embodiment entitled
Bodies and Memories: Merleau‐Ponty, Bergson, and the time of difference
She serves on the executive committee of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and is the Feminist Philosophy section editor for
.
Alia Al‐Saji
Philosophy Compass
ISSN:0038-4283
2041-6962
DOI:10.1111/j.2041-6962.2012.00095.x