SOURCE: Glenn, John D., Jr. “Merleau-Ponty's Existential Dialectic.” Tulane Studies in Philosophy 29 (December 1980): 81-93.

In the following essay, Glenn discusses Merleau-Ponty's existential dialectic in terms of “mind and body, of temporality, and of human freedom.”

There are many respects in which the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty can be described as dialectical.¹ His first two major works, The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, often proceed dialectically, posing and then undercutting traditional views on the nature of and relation between man and world. More significant, of course, is the positive philosophical standpoint which emerges: a conception of human existence or “being-in-the-world” which goes beyond the traditional oppositions of realism and idealism, mind and body, determinism and radical freedom. In this essay, I will offer an exposition and interpretation of a theme which is crucial to Merleau-Ponty's development of this conception, and which is dialectical in the sense that he...