FROM DUALISM TO THE ONTOLOGY OF FLESH (LA CHAIR): MERLEAU-PONTY'S RESPONSE TO SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL CRISES
The world today is witnessing a deepening crisis of social hierarchy and environmental degradation. A closer analysis reveals that both stem from an enduring philosophical issue: the persistence of dualistic thinking. The rigid divisions between subject and object, nature and culture, and self and other continue to shape the socio-political structures and ecological realities of our time. Against this backdrop, this study explores the ontology of flesh (la chair) developed by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), which offers a non-dualistic framework for overcoming these divisions. Through a critical engagement with his concepts of embodiment, perception, and reversibility, this research examines how the ontology of flesh can serve as a philosophical response to the pressing social and environmental challenges of our time. Furthermore, it offers a new way of understanding being, relationality, and responsibility.
Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (1914–1926) visually parallels Merleau-Ponty’s move beyond subject-object dualism toward an ontology of embodied relation. By dissolving boundaries between sky and pond, surface and depth, the paintings draw the viewer into a perceptual field where meaning emerges through interconnection rather than separation.
Research Question
How does Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of flesh challenge traditional dualism and provide a foundation for embodied relationality as a response to contemporary social and ecological crises?
Objectives
Examine how the subject-object divide sustains social hierarchy and environmental exploitation.
Investigates Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of embodied perception and the lived body that challenges dualism
Develop the ontology of flesh as a response to contemporary crisis.
Methodology
This research employs a comparative analysis of dualistic and non-dualistic philosophical frameworks. It involves a close textual analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s seminal works, focusing on his key concepts. A critical engagement with his ontology of flesh serves as a means to challenge the persistence of dualism and apply it to the contemporary social and ecological crisis.
Literature
Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Edited by John Cottingham, translated by Donald Cress, Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter, Harvard University Press, 1993.
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. Harper & Row, 1980.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes, Routledge, 2012.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Edited by Claude Lefort, translated by Alphonso Lingis, Northwestern University Press, 1968.
