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Merleau-Ponty's Human-Animality Intertwining and the Animal Question
- Configurations
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 18, Numbers 1-2, Winter 2010
- pp. 161-180
- 10.1353/con.2010.0004
- Article
- Additional Information
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late work locates humans within a wild or brute being that sustains a synergy among life forms. His "Nature" lectures explored the philosophical implications of evolutionary biology and animal studies and, with The Visible and the Invisible, describe a horizontal kinship between humans and other animals. This work offers a striking alternative to Heidegger's panicky insistence on an abyss between humans and other animals, which Derrida questions though cannot seem to discard. For Merleau-Ponty, literary works probe the invisible realm of wildness that is our only environment, a realm full of language and meaningfully experienced by all animals.