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171 Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty Philosophers of Ambiguity Gail Weiss introDuCtion: ConteMPoraneouS influenCeS Most often, when we attempt to chart the influence of one scholar on another, what we are seeking to describe is a one-way relationship; we are usually trying to determine how one person’s work set the stage for those who followed him or her. famous examples of these types of relationships in the continental philosophical tradition include those in which the later thinker’s work builds on themes addressed by her or his predecessor, taking them in a new direction (e.g., Schopenhauer and nietzsche, freud and lacan, etc.), as well as cases where the subsequent work commences with a strong critique of a predecessor’s position on one or more issues (e.g., Berkeley and locke, hegel and kierkegaard, etc.). if we examine the connections between Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work, however, something altogether different seems to be going on. for one thing, they were contemporaries, born the same year (1908), living only a short distance from one another in Paris for most of their careers, writing (and becoming famous) during the same time period. Moreover, their relationship predated their identity as authors; they first became close friends during their college years when they met as fellow philosophy students at the Sorbonne. they took the same final exams as twenty-year-olds in March 1928 (Simone Weil came in first, Beauvoir second, and Merleau-Ponty third), and were assigned to the same lycée the following January (along with Claude lévi-Strauss) for their practice teaching.1 Merleau-Ponty seriously dated and had hoped to marry Beauvoir’s best friend, Zaza, before her early tragic death, and the three of them spent hours and hours together, with Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty frequently arguing about philosophical themes with mutual respect and admiration, even though they often disagreed. neither remained for very long at a lycée; unlike Beauvoir, who never taught again, Merleau-Ponty continued his academic career, occupying the Chair of Child Psychology formerly held by Jean Piaget at his alma mater, the Sorbonne, at the time of his sudden death in 1961.2 172 Be au voir anD WeStern t h ouGh t Despite their early philosophical differences, Beauvoir’s and Merleau-Ponty’s respective work often emphasizes common themes, three of which will be the focus of this essay: (1) the essential ambiguity that defines human existence implies that every situation we encounter has no fixed meaning, entails that new perspectives on one’s current situation are always possible, and provides new ways to define oneself and one’s situation; (2) an understanding of subjectivity as always already grounded in, and therefore arising out of, intersubjective experiences (or, to use Sartrean language, the view that being-for-others is a constitutive feature of beingfor -itself); and (3) the powerful influence exercised by one’s cultural, political, and historical situation in shaping the meanings and values an individual ascribes to her or his existence. although all three of these themes are worthy of extensive discussion in their own right, i focus the most on Beauvoir’s and Merleau-Ponty’s respective descriptions of the ambiguity of human existence. the very notion of ambiguity, i argue, plays foundational roles in both of their ideas; indeed, it is woven through, and central to, their respective discussions of intersubjectivity and the situation, those formative, yet ever-changing aspects of human existence that together help to shape the meanings we ascribe to our experiences from one moment to the next. Despite their agreement that human existence lacks a fixed meaning and is, therefore, essentially ambiguous, and further that this is a positive rather than a negative phenomenon (or, more accurately, as we shall see, series of phenomena), it is important to note that Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty emphasize and explore very different existential dimensions of ambiguity. in particular, Merleau-Ponty develops an account of perceptual ambiguity as a lived, embodied experience, while Beauvoir explicates the ethical implications of the ambiguities of human desire. yet both insist that ambiguity is an animating force in all human relationships and in the situation as such. rather than seeing these different accounts of ambiguity as mutually exclusive, there is good evidence that Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty saw their respective accounts as complementary to one another. together, i suggest, their accounts present ambiguity as a dynamic phenomenon that is revealed in strikingly different ways throughout human existence...

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