Merleau-Ponty and Nancy on Sense and Being

Marie-Eve Morin proposes a reinterpretation of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and Nancy from the perspective of realist and object-oriented tendencies in contemporary philosophy. The realist critique of subject-centred anthropocentric thinking indicates the danger, inherent in the phenomenological approach, of reducing being to sense. Morin demonstrates how Merleau-Ponty and Nancy avoid this pitfall through the development of ontologies that respect the materiality and exteriority of what exists without reaffirming the Cartesian divide between mind and world. Morin lays out the parameters of this philosophical approach which operates outside of Cartesian dualism. She orients her analysis around three ideas where Merleau-Ponty's and Nancy's thinking intersect: Body, Thing, Being. Each time, she tracks the role of difference or spacing within sensing and sense-making and concludes that their respective conceptions - as encroachment and promiscuity or as unpassable limit - may provide counterweights to each other. Marie-Eve Morin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.