Rajiv Kaushik 
Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism [EPUB ebook] 
The Matrixed Ontology

Merleau-Ponty says in his Institution and Passivity lectures that he wants to ‘consider criticism itself as a symbolic form’ instead of doing ‘a philosophy of symbolic form.’ This invites the possibility of an unconventional thought: If critical philosophy is a symbolic form, it cannot disclose its own limits and is, in fact, uncritical. Furthermore, the symbolic form can never itself be thought according to the terms of the criticism it produces but is always only constellated and matrixed within them—a symbolic form within both reflection and what it reflects on, within consciousness and the world. Thus, as Rajiv Kaushik argues, the symbolic form is another name for what Merleau-Ponty calls ontological divergence. Only now divergence introduces the question of a limit to both the subject and philosophy itself. This is nothing less than a psychoanalysis of philosophy.



Kaushik’s analyses of the matrices between space—imagination, light—dark, awake—asleep, and repression—expression reveal this symbolism in its form of divergence, its lack of origin and destination. Kaushik also argues that the phenomenology of symbolism must detour from the purely descriptive method. Drawing from Merleau-Ponty’s recently published course materials, and attentive to his reliance on literature and literary language,
Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism continues the living force of Merleau-Ponty’s thought and develops his radical insight of the primacy of the symbolic form, even in an ontology that claims to be about the sensible and its elements.

Tabella dei contenuti

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgments



Introduction

Matrix Events and Institution

Sedimentation and Symbolism in Institution

Symbolic Forms and Elemental Being

Outline of Chapters



1. Matrix Events: Methods and Antecedents

The Homeric Diphthong

The Platonic Dividing-Collecting

The Merleau-Pontian
ecart

Interrogative Method and
ecart


Ecart and Division in Heraclitus


λόγος and
ἁ
πτόμενον in Heraclitus

Some Remaining Questions



2. Space—Imagination

Abstract Geometrical Essences, Morphological Ideals, and Phantasy in Husserl

The Role of Imagination in the Substruction of Essences

Sculptural Shapes and the Space of Imagination

Beyond Sight and Image

Some Remaining Questions



3. Light—Dark/Awake—Asleep

The Light—Dark Opposition in Jean-Luc Nancy

Light—Dark and Elementality

Waking—Sleeping

Dark Sleep

Some Remaining Questions



4. Philosophy—Symbolism

Dreams and Passivity

The Positive Symbol

The Positive Symbol and Psyche

The Positive Symbol, Psyche, and
λέγειν

The Positive Symbol in Philosophy: Analysis and the Analyzed

Some Remaining Questions



5. Philosophical Language—Literary Language

Ontology, Not Metaphorical Ontology

Finding a Hermeneutical Reverie with Proust

Some Remaining Questions



Conclusion

Sedimentation, Elementality

The Different Politics of Metaphor and Symbolism

Politics, History, and Elements



Notes

Bibliography

Index

Circa l’autore

Rajiv Kaushik is Professor of Philosophy at Brock University in Canada. He is the coeditor (with Emmanuel Alloa and Frank Chouraqui) of
Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy, also published by SUNY Press, and the author of
Art, Language and Figure in Merleau-Ponty: Excursions in Hyper-Dialectic and
Art and Institution: Aesthetics in the Late Works of Merleau-Ponty.