Topics in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of the Crisis

Abstract

Merleau-Ponty referred to Husserl´s Krisis from his early works to his last courses and writings, and his reading of that work played a central role in the formation of several key notions of his own phenomenology. In his Krisis Husserl presented a new way to transcendental reduction which focused on the Lebenswelt. Merleau-Ponty proposed that these last methodological reflections of Husserl point to an "incomplete reduction" that can not be overcome by means of a second reduction to a pure consciousness. This interpretation underlines the constitutive intertwining of the transcendental and the empirical ego, the internal bond of the ego and the others in intersubjectivity, and the horizontal relation of philosophy and psychology.