Logic and contingency of history. Merleau-Ponty and Marxism

Abstract

In this article, I explore Merleau-Ponty’s problem in Marxism, or the inquiry into the logic and contingency of history. Especially concerning its intentions to delve deeper, after his works on perception, into the bond between his research on the phenomenon of expression and the general problem of interhuman relations. My purpose consists, firstly, in exhibiting that this experimental character reveals in a better way the singularity of his philosophy of history within the Marxist’s understanding of the individual as a social and historical being on the scope of intersubjective relations. That’s why Merleau-Ponty adopted the well-known attitude of a “Marxist waiting” [attentisme marxiste] during this period, convinced that, according to the principles of Marxist philosophy, the contingency of the proletariat’s concealment in a certain period does not invalidate the possibility of a future revolutionary flux. Nonetheless, by introducing the notion of “institution” into his interpretation, history is now understood through that symbolic medium in which the inquiry into meaning or the attention to institution in history emphasizes the bond between passivity and resistance to meaning. This was less clear in a conception of contingency that placed all the weight on human activity. Thus, from a solidarity between phenomenology and Marxism, Merleau-Ponty transitions towards an ontological questioning of Marx. This runs parallel with his shift from phenomenology, centered on consciousness, to ontology.