Manipulate or inhabit? Merleau-Ponty and the paradox of science

Abstract

The understanding of the phenomenological project which goes from Husserl to his successors has never been immune to interpretations which are disparate and, above all, fraught with misconceptions. One of Merleau-Ponty’s efforts was always to clarify the status of that program, especially when it comes to describing the relationship between science and philosophy. Merleau-Ponty diagnoses a symptomatic crisis regarding reasons of principle in both subjects. This critical result has occasioned, however, some pretext that phenomenology neglects the positive knowledge dispensing, strictly speaking, all ‘objectivity’ and ‘verification’ or yet, that it would be tendentiously ‘invading’ the scientist’s field of work. Through contextualizing such a controversy shall we evaluate its merit, that is, measure its range and its limits, clarifying the real meaning of the phenomenological critical of science and its ontological shift which is thought to have led to a sui generis paradox.

Key words: Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology, ontology, science, crisis, paradox.