Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty's New Ontology of Self

by David Morris (Editor), Kym Maclaren (Editor)

Overview

This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's thought as a whole and the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist's views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such; it is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, and that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself.

Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty's lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty's contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy.

This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty.

Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821421086
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2015
Series:	Series In Continental Thought , #47
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David Morris is a professor of philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto and is the author of The Sense of Space and numerous articles and book chapters on Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology.

Kym Maclaren is an associate professor of philosophy at Ryerson University. She holds a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University and has published several articles and book chapters on Merleau-Ponty and issues of selfhood, embodiment, and intersubjectivity.

Table of Contents

• Abbreviations for Works by Merleau-Ponty
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Memory and the Temporality of the Self
• The Gift of Memory: Sheltering the I
  Kirsten Jacobson, University of Maine
• The Depths of Time in the World’s Memory of Self
  Glen A. Mazis, Penn State Harrisburg
• Null-Body, Protean Body, Potent Body, Neutral Body, Wild Body
  Elizabeth A. Behnke, Study Project in Phenomenology of the Body
• The Impossibilities of the I: Self, Memory, and Language in Merleau-Ponty and Derrida
  John Russon, University of Guelph
• Part II: Expression, Institution, and Ontology
• Memory—Of the Future: Institution and Memory in the Later Merleau-Ponty
  Robert Vallier, Sciences-Po Paris / DePaul University
• Memory, Sedimentation, Self: The Weight of the Ideal in Bergson and Merleau-Ponty
  Donald A. Landes, Concordia University
• Expression in Merleau-Ponty’s Aesthetics, Philosophy of Nature, and Ontology
  Véronique M. Fóti, Pennsylvania State University
• “This Power to Which We Are Vowed”:
  Subjectivity and Expression in Merleau-Ponty
  Scott Marratto, Michigan Technological University
• The Origin of Corporeal Ipseity: Between Lag and Institution
  Caterina Rea, Universidade da Integração da Lusofonia Afro-brasileira (Translated by Darian Meacham)
• Part III: The Ontology of Time
• The Subject as Time: Merleau-Ponty’s Transition from Phenomenology to Ontology
  Michael R. Kelly, University of San Diego
• Coming and Going of Time
  Bernhard Waldenfels, Ruhr University Bochum
• The Presence of the Artwork, a Past That Is Not Past: Merleau-Ponty and Paul Klee
  Galen A. Johnson, University of Rhode Island
• Edges of Time, Edges of Memory
  Edward S. Casey, Stony Brook University
• Index

Editorial Reviews

An important volume, both for bringing together some excellent pieces of Merleau-Ponty scholarship and for opening up an ontological perspective on the self, which definitely merits further research.”—Jakub Čapek, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (June 2020)


“Assembling some of the most important Merleau-Ponty scholars working today, Time, Memory, Institution may be the most important volume on Merleau-Ponty published in many, many years.”—Leonard Lawlor, author of Early Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy


“The rich and impressive essays in Time, Memory, Institution make a new and significant contribution to the field, dealing with works of Merleau-Ponty’s that have only recently become available in English.”—Jack Reynolds, au

From the Publisher