SOURCE: Silverman, Hugh J. “Re-Reading Merleau-Ponty.”¹ Telos, no. 29 (fall 1976): 106-29.

In the following essay, Silverman argues that Merleau-Ponty's last publication, Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Hegel, serves as a criticism of his earlier thought and a bridge from modernism to postmodernism.

In Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Hegel, Merleau-Ponty reassesses the European philosophical tradition which highlights the names of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. His problematic is the status of philosophy in relation to its non-philosophical sources and goals. I shall propose that Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Hegel, Merleau-Ponty's last course, elaborates a thematic which is both critical to his earlier philosophical activity and transitional to the increasingly significant “structuralist” perspectives—even to their current “post-structuralist” phases. The central role that Merleau-Ponty's thought plays is decentered into its actual expression just as much as his positions demand particularized formulations in order to be understood. Thus Merleau-Ponty's influence...