The incarnation changes everything: the genesis of the philosophy of the flesh in Merleau-Ponty's thought

Abstract

This investigation aims to present in general lines the genesis of the philosophy of the flesh based on the work of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty. There is no denying the fact that our author's philosophy is receiving a new impetus in contemporary times thanks to both the publication and the reception of his Unpublished writings from the courses given during the intermediate phase of his thought (1950), released in France at the beginning of this decade. Without a doubt, these writings, in consonance with those that preceded him, such as the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), as well as his later ones, offer the reader new elements to nuance the understanding of carnality according to his ontology of negativity developed in his mature work The Visible and the Invisible (1960). By sticking to the question of the genesis of the philosophy of the flesh, we also want to point out that the author's thought, focused on the motto that the incarnation changes everything, allows us to reinscribe the questions of language, culture, ethics, subjectivity, alterity, etc., in another existential and ontological space, to the point of being able to avoid the tendency to abstraction of the theoretical Logos or even the limits of transcendental phenomenology, which are still somewhat latent in some modern philosophical currents.