Volume 4 (2002): Issue 1 (October 2002)

This essay is an attempt to read Merleau-Ponty’s ln Praise of Philosophy as a text in which the French phenomenologist breaks with Sartre and at the same time states his view on philosophical engagement and the relation between philosophy and politics. By reading this Lecture as a reply to Sartre I shall argue that there is a connection between this text and the lively debate that in the fifties opposed the two French philosophers on the place of philosophy in the Lebenswelt. In the letters exchanged at the time, first edited by François Ewald and published in 1994, one can find evidence for understanding their different views.

In the Lecture Merleau-Ponty never mentions either Sartre’s name or his philosophy. However, I shall argue that some of Merleau-Ponty’s most important theses are directed against Sartre, namely, when the former claims that there is an opposition between the philosopher and the man of action (or the professional politician).

In part one I shall analyse Sartre’s letter to Merleau-Ponty claiming that the Lecture is a self-justification of sorts and accusing him of practising the phenomenological ɛπoχη. This accusation by Sartre is evidence of a clear difference between the sartrean concept of “existential engagement” and Merleau--Ponty’s own concept of the refusal of choice.

In part two, I shall try to show that ln Praise of Philosophy belongs to Merleau-Ponty’ s inquiries in phenomenology and this fact must be taken into account. The analysis of Merleau-Ponty’ s letter to Sartre explaining the Lecture clearly shows the relation between the concept of good ambiguity and the concept of engagement. At this point it becomes quite obvious that the dispute between the two philosophers is not over the meaning of engagement but indeed about the meaning of phenomenology and phenomenological ɛπoχη. I shall argue that Merleau-Ponty’s ambiguity is mainly a kind of the husserlean ɛπoχη. I shall also claim that one finds a clear echo of Husserl’ s Vienna Lecture in Merleau-Ponty’ s ln Praise of Philosophy.

Finally, I shall show that both lectures are replies to unmentioned philosophers, in which both refuse to identify philosophy with political engagement or national engagement. For them, the task of philosophy is truth as engagement with humanity.

The scientific phenornenology of Bachelard is constituted as an original reflection about the production of the scientific work, in their subjective (the scientist’s Psychology/Psychoanalysis) and objective (the phenomenon while measure) slopes. Inspired for a softer or a soft-headed phenomenology, the French author wanted to reformulate. some concepts and manners of seeing of the German classic phenomenology. Critical of the husserlian phenomenology of the concept of Meinung, Bachelard enrolled his epistemological labor inside of the history of the applied phenomenology to the sciences.

In spite. of, he defends the lost «husserlian purity», independently of the denial of the idealism of the absolute conscience. The main theory is the one of the “Applied Rationalism” to the science and the consequent passing of thc psychologism but, and at the same time, of the mathesis universalis. The “discursive idealism of Bachelard didn’t ignore the specific disparity of the several scientific practices, on the contrary, he examined them the light of what called «phenomenontechnique».

The recovery of the prejudice as well as of the authority and tradition that Gadamer accomplishes is made with the following goal: to point out the function of the dialogue, which has a main role in the legitimation and acceptance of the tradition. The philosopher introduces the dialogue conditions between tradition and the present time, all together with their prejudices and the mutual influences of the several horizons. Also, he includes the privileged condition granted by the distance of time. Gadamer wants to make possible to each and everyone to have what he calls Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein, especially those who investigate history. We cannot consider history as an object that accepts submissively a complete investigation as well as a definitive analysis. Gadamer try to alert us for the danger that is inserted on the lack of our dialogue capability, which will maintain veiled precisely the kind of knowledge that we most want and need to know. The faith and the search for an objective and absolute knowledge or an absolutely objective knowledge is a mistake and an ingenuousness. This systematic failure cost us the lack of a closer understanding of the historical truth and it disables us of reaching the authentic Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein.