Merleau-Ponty and the Phenomenological Reduction

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Abstract

It is commonly believed that Merleau-Ponty rejected Husserl’s phenomenological reduction in favour of his existentialist account of être au monde. I show that whilst Merleau-Ponty rejected, what he saw as, the transcendental idealist context in which Husserl presents the reduction, he nevertheless accepts the heart of it, the epoché, as a methodological principle. Contrary to a number of Merleau-Ponty scholars, être au monde is perfectly compatible with the epoché and Merleau-Ponty endorses both. I also argue that it is a mistake to think that Merleau-Ponty’s liberal use of the results of empirical psychology signify a rejection of the epoché. A proper understanding of his views on the relation between phenomenology and psychology shows that, at least in Merleau-Ponty’s eyes, the methods of phenomenology and the empirical sciences are largely similar. I conclude that we have every reason to think that Merleau-Ponty accepted Husserl’s demand that the phenomenologist place the world in brackets.

Keyword(s)

Merleau-Ponty; phenomenological reduction

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