“We grasp exteral space through our bodily situation. A ‘corporeal or postural schema’ gives us at every moment a global, practical, and implicit notion of the relation between our body and things, of our hold on them. A system of possible movements, or “motor projects” radiates from us to our environment. Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument, and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we move an object. We transport it without instruments as if by magic, since it is ours and because through it we have direct access to space. For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most secret affective movements, those most deeply tied to humoral infrastructure, help to shape our perception of things.” (italices mine) Maurice Merleau-Ponty (MMP), The Primacy of Perception
It has been noted by several of you that I seem to be rehashing some of Merleau-Ponty’s work. This is partially true, thus partially not. I encountered Merleau-Ponty through Marjorie Grene (the philosophical task-master of Michael Polanyi and a monumental force in her own right). So yes, Merleau-Ponty is in the background of my thinking and I wholly endorse much of what is exemplified by the above quote. Merleau-Ponty is influenced by Heidegger and there is resonance with Husserl and Satre. But the overlap is not complete. The reason I find him compelling is his insistence on the body as central to humanity.
I wonder how Nietzsche would have reacted to Merleau-Ponty’s project? Besides his disdain for all academic scholarship, the centrality of the body, not the ego, Continue reading ‘In the Meantime: Maurice Merleau-Ponty’
I’ve been too busy of late to get coherent thoughts down. I am currently working out a view of imputative movement in the Pentateuch, which I hope to parlay into the current conversation on imputation. It will not be a rebuttal, but possibly a fresh (and more redemptive historical) purview into the epistemology of imputation. That’s what is coming down the pipe.
In preparations for my trip to the UK, I found this little gem of a book From Cells to Souls. Although the title is a bit campy, the substance is definitively not. Alan J. Torrance (University of St. Andrews) writes a proposal (”What is a person?”) based on Nancy Cartwright’s pluralism principle. If I understand it correctly, Torrance rejects physicalism, emergentism and nonreductive physicalism on the grounds that these cannot adequately account for the ‘leap’ from physical to mental. He has a section that is massively efficient at surveying the field of attempts to reconcile physicalists’ concerns. But in the end, supervenient and emergent qualia just do not get us to the common mental experiences.
First off, this is a must-read for anyone mildly interested in the Paul or anyone who has any criticism of N.T. Wright. He articulates, quite clearly, where the real points of debate lie and where his views should not be conflated with others.