The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity (SUNY Series in Contemporary French Thought) - Softcover

Marratto, Scott L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1438442327 ISBN 13: 9781438442327

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2013

Synopsis

An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions.

Challenging a prevalent Western idea of the self as a discrete, interior consciousness, Scott L. Marratto argues instead that subjectivity is a characteristic of the living, expressive movement establishing a dynamic intertwining between a sentient body and its environment. He draws on the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, contemporary European philosophy, and research in cognitive science and development to offer a compelling investigation into what it means to be a self.

About this title

About the Author:

Scott L. Marratto is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Michigan Technological University and the coauthor (with Lawrence E. Schmidt) of The End of Ethics in a Technological Society.

Review:

“...[an] excellent book ... The Intercorporeal Self is a technically sophisticated and enriching work that engages with many interpretive strands and approaches in Merleau-Ponty scholarship, clarifying what is distinct and powerful about Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of subjectivity ... [it] is a substantial contribution to Merleau-Ponty scholarship, and should inspire future research on Merleau-Ponty’s rich corpus, as well as into the nature of sensibility and subjectivity themselves.” ― Symposium

“...a bold and brave attempt to provide a unified interpretation of the central themes of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, and as such it deserves to be welcomed and studied carefully by all those who value Merleau-Ponty’s writings.” ― Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

“The Intercorporeal Self amounts to a kind of dialectic between Merleau-Ponty’s thought and naturalism as it functions within contemporary analytic thought and deconstruction as it appears in Derrida’s thought. Marratto constructs argumentation that shows that Merleau-Ponty’s thought cannot be reduced to naturalism and that it does not fall prey to the deconstructive critique. Consequently, Marratto, better than anyone else, shows the contribution that Merleau-Ponty makes to contemporary philosophy. This is an important book. I would even venture to say that it is a genuine work of philosophy.” ― Leonard Lawlor, Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University

“Marratto brings Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology into a mutually transformative dialogue with the latest trends in the embodied sciences of the mind. His book puts side by side notions of intercorporeality, habit, style, and auto-affection with Gestalt, ecological, sensorimotor, and enactive perspectives on perception and subjectivity. Marratto weaves together the threads of conceptual traditions that saw themselves as incompatible not so long ago. A significant contribution to current efforts toward reconceptualizing the lived body as the matrix of significance and expressive being-in-the-world, and subjectivity as self-affecting, self-initiated movement and intercorporeal attunement to the demands of other bodies.” ― Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, coeditor of Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1438442327
• ISBN 13: 9781438442327
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254