CultureLab
Research Projects
Merleau-Ponty’s Critique and Reformulation of Husserl’s Phenomenological Project

We intend to investigate Merleau-Ponty’s critique and reformulation of Husserl’s notion of phenomenology. We want to know, in the first place, whether phenomenology, as it was taken up and redefined by Merleau-Ponty, can still be viewed as a variation of transcendental and idealist philosophy. This problem will lead us to contrast Merleau-Ponty’s and Husserl’s concept of the subject. To what extent does Merleau-Ponty introduces a new concept of the subjectivity in the place of Husserl’s transcendental consciousness – a finite, historical and embodied subject? Or is something like the latter already implicitly present in Husserl’s last writings? Lastly, we want to know whether Merleau-Ponty’s reformulation of phenomenology entails a revaluation of naturalism, how the relation between the ‘first-person perspective’ and ‘third-person perspective’ on consciousness can be comprehended anew and how to understand the relation between the phenomenological approach to the mind and the cognitive sciences.