Merleau-Ponty In Contemporary Perspectives

This volume evaluates the contribution of Merleau-Ponty to various philosophical problems, from the culmative point of view of more than thirty years of continental philosophy since the time of his death. However, as the various essays gathered here confirm, the title of the volume risks a certain irony - that which is involved in trying to place into vision (albeit now in only too silent and invisible a manner), namely an original thought whose creative unfolding still awaits its future. As the various papers of this volume attest, Merleau-Ponty is a contemporary philosopher who offers new directions for philosophical interrogation, who still frames in a fresh and provocative voice the issues which remain urgent for our time. Like recent collections of essays on Merleau-Ponty, the present volume offers a critical and interpretive look backward to his works from a relatively differentiated and stable vantage point from which they might come definitively into view, but beyond this the present volume is unique in also moving forward to the works of Merleau-Ponty just as we now move in an exploratory way toward the future of philosophy.