A Study Of Merleau Ponty’s View Of Body From The Perspective Of Materialism

Merleau-Ponty was not only an outstanding exponent of French existentialism,but also an important figure in Western Marxism.Merleau-Ponty’s view of the body blends ideas from phenomenology,existentialism,and Marxist philosophy,and he has been called both an "existential Marxist" and a "phenomenological Marxist." Based on a materialist standpoint,the article develops the study of Merleau-Ponty’s body view from three aspects.First,the theoretical origins of the Merleau-Ponty view of the body.The question of the relationship between body and mind developed by rationalists represented by Descartes is the most primitive source of Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to construct the body subject.In order to solve the problem of the mind-body relationship and the contradiction between the transcendental self and the living world in Husserl’s phenomenology of consciousness,under the influence of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology,Merleau-Ponty believed that phenomenology was not only the study of essence,but also a theory that put essence back into existence.However,Heidegger ignored the body of Being-in-the-World and did not really answer the questions about Being-in-the-World.It was with the help of Marx’s materialist theory,especially Marx’s analysis of the relationship between human body and mind,that Merleau-Ponty returned to the body itself,realizing the transformation from the phenomenology of consciousness to the phenomenology of the body.Second,the main content of Merleau-Ponty’s view of the body.Merleau-Ponty’s view of the body has three main aspects.First,Merleau-Ponty constructed a completely new body-subject.By returning to consciousness,returning to the body,Merleau-Ponty constructs a body-subject that unites the mind and body,the body and the world,the "phenomenal body",thus achieving a breakthrough in the traditional mind-body dualism.Second,Merleau-Ponty’s body-subject communicates not only with everything in the world,but also with others.The process of communication between the body-subject and others is presented as:the intentionality of my body extends into the body of others,and my body perceives the body of others.The body of others and my body form a whole,which is the positive and negative side of a phenomenon.This is the inter-body constructed by Merleau-Ponty.Thirdly,Merleau-Ponty’s body involves not only himself,others,but also the body of social history.Merleau-Ponty put forward the theory of historical existence from the perspective of body.Third,this article reflects on and evaluates Merleau-Ponty’s view of the body.The contribution of Merleau-Ponty ’s view of the body is mainly reflected in two aspects:by constructing a new body-subject,Merleau-Ponty solves the major problem that plagues traditional Western philosophy,namely the mind-body dualism;Merleau-Ponty ’s view of the body enriches the body connotation of Marxism and opens up a new perspective to explore Marxist philosophy.The shortcomings of Merleau-Ponty ’s view of the body are also reflected in two aspects:First,Merleau-Ponty relied too much on intuitive abilities and did not examine the reality of capitalist life,thus ignoring people’s social practices;Secondly,although like Marx,Merleau-Ponty has discovered the abstract problems of Hegel ’s dialectics,his solution is to put the contradiction between form and content into the conceived environment,which is far from Marx ’s concrete and critical dialectics.