Merleau-Ponty and the Dialectical Turn of Phenomenology

Merleau-Ponty’s place in the phenomenological movement, established by Edmund Husserl, can be determined only by considering the important role of “dialectic” in his thought. Using a dialectical method, he opens up a new path toward a “dialectical phenomenology” to release phenomenology, as understood in his time, from the antinomies into which it was entrapped. By adopting a dialectical strategy, Merleau-Ponty no longer defines the scope of phenomenology as “pure consciousness.” The encroachment of the “consciousness” and the “world” upon each other does not allow defining the scope of phenomenological investigation in terms of “substantiality of a domain.” Therefore, contrary to Husserl and Heidegger who delineated the phenomenological investigation against sciences, Merleau-Ponty, choosing a Hegelian approach, tries to overcome the ontic/ontological duality and widens the phenomenology’s scope of investigation.