Phenomenology & the Return to Beginnings

by John Sallis

This work traces how Maurice Merleau-Ponty accounts for the beginning of philosophical thought in the dual sense of understanding its origin and showing how that origin permits philosophy (and all thought) to achieve truth. It demonstrates that this process is never fully completed.

Genres: Philosophy

120 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1973

About the author

John Sallis was an American philosopher well known for his work in the tradition of phenomenology. From 2005 until his death, he was the Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He previously taught at Pennsylvania State University (1996–2005), Vanderbilt University (1990–1995), Loyola University of Chicago (1983–1990), Duquesne University (1966–1983) and the University of the South (1964–1966).

Reviews

[Kamakana]

if you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

.??? 2000s: i bought this first five or six years ago, enjoyed it so much gave it a five: could not recall it enough to write review, so read it again, impressed again, to write this review:…

230507: have now over decades read this three (3) times. offer continue thematic interpretation of each part. had stopped somehow after part 4.

first is explored the idea of reflexivity as necessary to appreciate philosophy, this question of questioning, that cannot be avoided in any attempt to fully express philosophy. and this question is necessarily directed to the beginning, to what defines, what inspires, what source all thought on thought must appreciate…

second is on merleau-ponty’s philosophy as being a ‘return’ to this freedom of beginning, indeed the only return which answers husserl’s insistence on scientifically, logically, revealing the full nature of syntheses of the world through perception. the movement, the tension, of the field of primordial perception and of pre-thematized essence of the world of which we are embedded…

third, and an aspect whose importance i had forgotten of this text, is the ‘new project’ merleau-ponty had embarked on in The Visible and the Invisible, the thoughts unfortunately left incomplete by his early death. sallis talks of how m-p was in the process of examining and erecting an entire new ontology, not beholden to typical dualisms traditional to philosophy…

fourth is the critique of phenomenology on our vaunted ‘perceptual faith’. this involves a truer expression of the inherent error in the concepts of modern ‘scientific’ ideas of the world vs m-p’s idea that precedes any chosen data that reaffirms itself as the only kind that matters eg. quale…

fifth are the ideas absorbed to such an extent from m-p it is difficult to imagine i ever thought of perception of the world any other way. that is, to be seen we must be seer, we must be of the same 'flesh'...

sixth is about the 'fundamental chiasm'. this is m-p's contention we never have complete correspondence between sensed and sensor, that there is always 'slippage', that our being is not founded on 'pre-reflective cogito' but 'pre-reflective perception'...

seventh is clarification of the origin of truth. m-p contends that the 'invisible' is like the 'idea' that makes 'the visible' possible. to the extent we are held up, our 'style', our being, by the 'invisible', our 'horizon' of perception is determined by our 'flesh'...

eighth is the 'return to beginnings'. this section revisits, from now phenomenologically-informed perspective, how does the project of questioning, and questioning of questioning, the questionableness of the world come to be thought by humans. this is because there is gap, slippage, non-coincidence between our perceptions and our world. this does not mean one is more 'correct' than the other, only that all, that is all, presuppositions must be perceived...

i have now read much more phenomenology, thus able to understand more the motif of ‘return to beginnings’, even more impressed. i have read quite a few texts that are commentaries on this or that idea of merleau-ponty, and by now several that could be called ‘applications’, this is regarded rightly as a classic of the second type. a short, sharp, easy to read text with some reference to husserl, sartre, heidegger…

more
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings
Phenomenology of Perception
The Visible and the Invisible
Merleau-Ponty's Last Vision: A Proposal for the Completion of "The Visible and the Invisible"
The Retrieval of the Beautiful: Thinking Through Merleau-Ponty’s Aesthetics
Ark of the Possible: The Animal World in Merleau-Ponty
The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting
Merleau-Ponty's Ontology
The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty's Ontology
Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy
Merleau-Ponty: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology: The Problem of Ideal Objects
Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism
Merleau-Ponty's Last Vision: A Proposal for the Completion of "The Visible and the Invisible"
Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception

[Donny]

The 'close to home' and plausible tech approach hit a sweet spot and I enjoyed the book very much.