Early Career Work in Progress Seminar (Wednesday - Week 8, TT25)
Wednesday 18 June, 4.30pm - 6:00pm
Ryle Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Arnaud Petit: 'A humble play of voices: Merleau-Ponty and the ending of Phenomenology'
Abstract: Merleau-Ponty strikingly concludes his magnum opus, Phenomenology of Perception, with a citation from Saint-Exupery’s Flight to Arras. On the face of it, Merleau-Ponty’s choice of concluding words is intriguing, if not puzzling: how could a few sentences lifted from Saint-Exupery’s narrative recounting of his involvement in the Bataille of France as a reconnaissance pilot provide a fitting ending for the wide-ranging investigations of Phenomenology into perception, action, and our way of being in the world? Yet, in the literature, Merleau-Ponty’s choice is overwhelmingly passed over in silence. If not, it tends to be dismissed as a mere effet de style. In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken: the ending of Phenomenology is on the contrary a carefully staged expression of Merleau-Ponty’s stance on philosophy itself, its standing and the nature of its possible achievements. As such it illuminates the whole project of Phenomenology.
Merleau-Ponty’s choice of concluding words betrays a threefold decision: i) to give the last words to another, ii) to make that other Saint-Exupery, and iii) to choose these words over any other. I argue that these are all philosophically significant within the context of Phenomenology and consider them in turn. What emerges from these considerations is a surprising play of voices and the promise of a radical rereading of Phenomenology.
