Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France

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Summary: Important Reading for Students of Merleau-Ponty
Review: "La Nature" is a volume that should be most welcome by students of Merleau-Ponty. It is a translation of three courses given by Merleau-Ponty at the College de France.

The first course, given in 1956-57 is entitled "The Concept of Nature," a survey of the historical elements that constitute the present concept of nature, from Aristotle and the Stoics, through a new reading of Descartes, Kant and a novel look at Schelling. From there it's on to Bergson and Husserl. Merleau-Ponty is tracing the idea of nature in each thinker and how it corresponds to ontology, attempting a new vision of nature more in step with recent developments in science. But he squanders the gains he made when he deals with the developments in physics. This stands as the weakest part of the lectures. Though he gives a good summary of quantum mechanics, he fails to understand the ramifications of quantum physics and its effect on nature, and, ultimately, ontology, preferring instead to hide behind Bergson and the process philosophy of Whitehead. Instead of using the new physics as a starting point, he instead settles for the cul-de-sac of metaphysics.

The second course given in 1957-58, is concerned with deconstructing the Cartesian concept of Nature by examining the recent advances in biology and behavioral studies. Animal as machine is replaced by the animal as being finding itself in the world: How does the animal show itself to others (including humans) - leading to asking what is the structure, then, of its behavior and how does it signify? His lecture of Lorenz's study of instinct is the highlight of this section.

The third course, 1959-60, is entitled "Nature and Logos: The Human Body." He re-examines his findings of the previous years and the emergence of the human body at the intersection of Nature and reason: "the concern is to grasp humanity first as another manner of being a body - to see humanity emerge just like Being in the manner of a watermark, not as another substance, but as 'interbeing', and not as an imposition of a for-itself on a body in-itself." This would later begin to developed in his last work, "The Visible and the Invisible," left unfinished by his sudden death. One can only wonder where he might have gone had he only lived to complete the work. These lectures give us a tantalizing peek into what well may have been.