The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity (SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought)

An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions. Challenging a prevalent Western idea of the self as a discrete, interior consciousness, Scott L. Marratto argues instead that subjectivity is a characteristic of the living, expressive movement establishing a dynamic intertwining between a sentient body and its environment. He draws on the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, contemporary European philosophy, and research in cognitive science and development to offer a compelling investigation into what it means to be a self. “The Intercorporeal Self amounts to a kind of dialectic between Merleau-Ponty’s thought and naturalism as it functions within contemporary analytic thought and deconstruction as it appears in Derrida’s thought. Marratto constructs argumentation that shows that Merleau-Ponty’s thought cannot be reduced to naturalism and that it does not fall prey to the deconstructive critique. Consequently, Marratto, better than anyone else, shows the contribution that Merleau-Ponty makes to contemporary philosophy.This is an important book. I would even venture to say that it is a genuine work of philosophy.” — Leonard Lawlor, Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University “Marratto brings Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology into a mutually transformative dialogue with the latest trends in the embodied sciences of the mind. His book puts side by side notions of intercorporeality, habit, style, and auto-affection with Gestalt, ecological, sensorimotor, and enactive perspectives on perception and subjectivity. Marratto weaves together the threads of conceptual traditions that saw themselves as incompatible not so long ago. A significant contribution to current efforts toward reconceptualizing the lived body as the matrix of significance and expressive being-in-the-world, and subjectivity as self-affecting, self-initiated movement and intercorporeal attunement to the demands of other bodies.” — Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, coeditor of Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science Scott L. Marratto is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Michigan Technological University and the coauthor (with Lawrence E. Schmidt) of The End of Ethics in a Technological Society

An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions. The Intercorporeal Self is an original exploration of the themes of subjectivity and self-consciousness in contemporary philosophy. Focusing on the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Scott L. Marratto challenges a prevalent Western idea of the self as a discrete, interior consciousness, arguing instead that subjectivity is a characteristic of the living, expressive movement establishing a dynamic intertwining between a living body and its environment. In developing this claim, he draws from recent research in cognitive science and development, as well as linguistics and philosophy of language, but also challenges these naturalistic approaches for often failing to do justice to the continuously self-transformative, responsive, and spontaneous character of being in the world. The book also brings Merleau-Ponty into dialogue with Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, showing that Merleau-Ponty anticipates the deconstruction of traditional presuppositions underlying modern concepts of the self, the mind, and nature. By bringing into conversation voices in philosophical traditions often kept apart, Marratto delivers a valuable work not only for readers interested in phenomenology, deconstruction, or cognitive science, but for all those interested in a fresh, broad-minded approach to the question of what it is to be a self.