Être-au-monde: Grundlinien einer philosophischen Anthropologie bei Maurice Merleau-Ponty (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 137 getting Heidegger into coherent English. Here, we should cite the author's remark (p. 57) that Heidegger "requires to be read literally." The reader must, therefore, be constantly alert and attentive to the precise, literal meaning of almost every word in the text, lest he glide into the usual practice of assimilating the new to the familiar by grasping it in terms of one's own cherished concepts, forgetting that Heidegger's intention is precisely the opposite , that of carrying our thoughts away from their habitual grooves into another dimension, away from 'subject, soul, consciousness, spirit, person, life, man' and from idealism and realism, Reality and the Absolute, away from the traditional epistemological and metaphysical concepts as well as from the conceptual framework of theology. (P. 59) The final section of the book examines Heidegger's analysis of the roots of metaphysical thinking, surely the prime concern of the later Heidegger. Heidegger's later insight (prefigured but not explicitly developed in Being and Time) that our thinking in Western philosophy has become stuck in the concepts of metaphysics or of onto-theo-logic raises the question of other possibilities of thinking. The beginnings of European thought are the wellspring of the possible; they might contain other ways of being actualized in thought than have been previously discovered and developed. Here, the author speaks cautiously, almost reticently, from the richness of his own Indian religious and philosophical tradition and suggests that there may well be unexplored possibilities in that tradition, too, which could be fruitful for what is "unthought in that other great beginning in the West" (p. 469). The scholarship in this book is admirable. Mehta has drawn intelligently from authors in English, French, and German, culling what is essential and helpful from a veritable maze of interpretations. All in all, this book should prove an indispensable aid and guide to any serious student of Heidegger. JOAN STAMBAUGH Hunter College, CUNY Etre-au-monde: Grundlinien einer philosoph&chen Anthropologie bei Maurice MerleauPonty . By Werner M~ller. (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1975. Pp. 362. DM 68) Contemporary German thought is searching for philosophical anthropology as a criterion and foundation for human action, historcal orientation, and an avenue to ontology. Yet, according to Miiller, the search cannot be satisfied within the German tradition of a Husserl or a Heidegger. The first lacks the requisite concreteness, whereas the latter subsumes man under the historical destiny of Being. Furthermore, German thought fails to incorporate the objective sciences and thus can be charged with one-sidedness and philosophical incompleteness. These are the grounds compelling MOller to turn to the work of Merleau-Ponty, whose thought goes beyond both the trandscendental-idealizing philosophies and the historicity of Being without losing the achievements of either. Moreover, Merleau-Ponty knows and respects the achievements of science without succumbing to its dogmatic assumptions. Miiller's work is an effort to present the entire thought of Merleau-Ponty along three distinguishable orientations: (1) defense of Merleau-Ponty's thought against interpretations based on a partial reading of his work; (2) tracing of Merleau-Ponty's development of philosophical anthropology and relating it to the figures who influenced such a development; (3) use of Merleau-Ponty's thought to develop a concrete philosophical anthropology as a replacement of the Kantian tradition. In place of the three Kantian questions What can I know? What must I do? What can I hope for? Miiller offers the questions Who is man? What is history? How is theology possible? (p. 18). 138 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The true task of philosophical anthropology is to confront consciousness with its prereflective life amidst the phenomena and to awaken it to its forgotten history. This means for MOiler that man's place in the scheme of things must be understood in terms of man as "being toward the world" (p. 91). In turn, "being toward the world" presupposes a fundamental grasp of the reality of the world. According to MOiler, Merleau-Ponty is one of the major thinkers of this century who raises the question of the "conditions of reality" instead of the usual questions of the "conditions of cognition" (p. 102). And it is precisely the...