Review of David Morris and Kym Maclaren Time, memory, institution: Merleau-Ponty's New Ontology of Self
2021
Abstract
The review essay of an important volume which considers Merleau-Ponty's contribution to philosophical reflections on the self. By the very title of the book under review (Time, memory, institution: Merleau-Ponty's New Ontology of Self), this contribution is labeled as ontological, that is, not limited to epistemological questions of the accessibility of the self (by means of self-knowledge or self-awareness), but inquiring into the nature of the self.
As such, the essays develop ideas of Merleau-Ponty's in which he shifted the focus from the more phenomenological questions of consciousness, be it reflective or pre-reflective, to the ontological question of what kind of entity the embodied self is.