Nature

by Merleau-Ponty, Maurice; Seglard, Dominique; Vallier, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780810114463
• ISBN10: 0810114461
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-12
• Publisher: Northwestern Univ Pr

Summary

Collected here are the written traces of courses on the concepts of nature given by Maurice Merieau-Ponty at the College de France in the 1950s--notes that provide a window on the thinking of one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. In two courses distilled by a student and in a third composed of Merieau-Ponty's own notes, the ideas that animated the philosopher's lectures and that informed his later publications emerge in an early, fluid form in the process of being eleborated, negotiated, critiqued, and reconsidered.

Table of Contents

Translator's Acknowledgments	xi
Translator's Introduction	xiii
First Course. The Concept of Nature, 1956-1957	3	(2)
Part 1. Study of the Variations of the Concept of Nature	5	(76)
1 The "Finalist" Element in Aristotle and the Stoics	7	(1)
2 Nature as the Idea of an Entirely Exterior Being, Made of Exterior Parts, Exterior to Man, and to Itself, as a Pure Object	8	(13)
A. Origin of This Conception	8	(1)
B. The First Idea of Nature in Descartes	9	(6)
C. The Second Cartesian Inspiration	15	(5)
D. Conclusion	20	(1)
3 The Humanist Conception of Nature	21	(15)
A. The Ideas of Kant	21	(6)
1. The Double Meaning of the Copernican Revolution	21	(2)
2. The Critique of Judgment	23	(4)
B. The Ideas of Brunschvicg	27	(9)
1. The Notion of Space	27	(1)
2. The Notion of Time	28	(1)
3. The Concept of Causality	29	(7)
4 The Romantic Conception of Nature	36	(45)
A. The Ideas of Schelling	36	(15)
1. The Notion of the Principle of the World	36	(3)
2. Naturata	39	(2)
3. The Object of Schelling's Philosophy: The Subjective-Objective	41	(3)
4. The Method of Philosophy: The Intuition of Intuition	44	(1)
5. Art and Philosophy	45	(1)
6. The Schellingian Circle	46	(2)
7. The Value of the Contribution: Schelling and Hegel	48	(3)
B. The Ideas of Bergson	51	(19)
1. Schelling and Bergson	51	(2)
2. Nature as the Aseity of the Thing	53	(5)
3. Nature as Life	58	(6)
4. The Ontological Infrastructure of the Concept of Nature in Bergson: The Ideas of Being and Nothingness	64	(6)
Note on Bergson and Sartre	70	(1)
C. The Ideas of Husserl	70	(13)
1. The Role of the Body in the Position of Things	74	(1)
2. The Role of the Other	75	(1)
3. Originary Objects: The Experience of the Earth	76	(5)
Part 2. Modern Science and Nature	81	(204)
Introduction: Science and Philosophy	83	(5)
A. Problems Posed by the Philosophical History of the Idea of Nature	83	(2)
B. Science and Philosophy	85	(3)
1 Classical and Modern Physics	88	(13)
A. Laplace's Conception	88	(1)
B. Quantum Mechanics	89	(6)
C. The Philosophical Significance of Quantum Mechanics	95	(6)
2 Notions of Space and Time	101	(12)
A. The Notion of Space	101	(5)
B. The Notion of Time	106	(7)
3 The Idea of Nature in Whitehead	113	(10)
Second Course. The Concept of Nature, 1957-1958: Animality, the Human Body, and the Passage to Culture	123	(2)
General Introduction: Notes on the Cartesian Conceptions of Nature and Their Relations to Judeo-Christian Ontology	125	(14)
A. The Ontology of the Object	125	(2)
B. The Ontology of the Existent Being	127	(2)
C. Relations between These Two Modes of Thought	129	(2)
D. How the Oscillation of Cartesian Thought Is Related to the Postulates of Judeo-Christian Thought	131	(8)
1. The Concept of Naturalism	135	(1)
2. Humanism	136	(1)
3. Theism	137	(2)
1 Animality: The Tendencies of Modern Biology	139	(28)
A. The Notion of Behavior	140	(18)
1. The Perception of the Circle	153	(1)
2. The Perception of Movement	153	(1)
3. The Becoming of a Painting	154	(1)
4. The Perception of Causality in a Living Being	154	(4)
B. The Notions of Information and Communication	158	(9)
1. Models of Living Being	160	(3)
2. The Problem of Language	163	(4)
2 Animality: The Study of Animal Behavior	167	(36)
A. The Descriptions of J. von Uexküll	167	(11)
1. The Umwelt of Lower Animals: The Animal-Machines	168	(2)
2. Organized Lower Animals	170	(1)
3. The Umwelt of Higher Animals	170	(3)
4. Philosophical Interpretation of the Notion of Umwelt	173	(5)
B. The "Oriented Character" of Organic Activities according to E.S. Russell	178	(5)
C. The Behavior of the Organism as Physiology in Exterior Circuit	183	(20)
1. The Phenomena of Mimicry (Hardouin): Living Beings and Magic	183	(3)
2. Portmann's Study of Animal Appearance (Die Tiergestalt)	186	(4)
3. Lorenz's Study of Instinct: The Passage from Instinct to Symbolism	190	(11)
Third Course. The Concept of Nature, 1959-1960: Nature and Logos: The Human Body	201	(84)
Introduction: Resumption of the Studies on Nature	203	(6)
A. Place of These Studies in Philosophy: Philosophy and Knowledge of Nature	203	(5)
B. Place of the Human Body in Our Study of Nature	208	(1)
First Sketch	209	(7)
Second Sketch	216	(5)
A. The Animal Body	216	(2)
B. The Libidinal Body and Intercorporeity	218	(1)
C. The Body and Symbolism	219	(1)
D. [Ontology]	220	(1)
Third Sketch: The Human Body	221	(8)
A. The Body as Animal of Perceptions	221	(3)
B. The Libidinal Body and Intercorporeity	224	(2)
C. The Body and Symbolism	226	(3)
Fourth Sketch: Two Preliminary Studies	229	(23)
A. Ontogenesis: Driesch's Analysis	230	(13)
B. Phylogenesis	243	(9)
Fifth Sketch	252	(7)
A. The Renaissance and Metamorphosis of Darwinism	252	(3)
B. Idealism	255	(4)
Sixth Sketch	259	(8)
A. Descriptions of Morphology	259	(2)
B. Philosophy: Dacqué's Kantfan Position	261	(1)
C. Statistical Evolution	262	(2)
D. Discussion and Conclusion	264	(3)
Seventh Sketch: Man and Evolution: The Human Body	267	(7)
Eighth Sketch: The Human Body	274	(11)
A. Esthesiology	274	(2)
B. The Libidinal Body	276	(2)
C. Libido	278	(7)
Notes	285