Transcendentalism and transcendence in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Kantian transcendental idealism

Abstract

The relationship between Merleau-Pontyan phenomenology and critical transcendental philosophy has often been approached in terms of the bodily and concrete reformulation that the phenomenologist would propose of transcendental consciousness. This paper aims to show that this new definition of the subjective and transcendental conditions of experience implies a different conception of its limits and of that which transcends it, thus evidencing another key contrast between both philosophies. The article examines the different meaning of the “transcendental” dimension in critical and phenomenological philosophies, and more particularly the correlative transformation of the “transcendent” in Merleau-Pontyan phenomenology, which redefines the transcendental conditions of experience in terms of “perspectives”. It is argued that this transformation enables an original realist stand based on phenomenological premises.

Keywords: Merleau-Ponty, Immanuel Kant, corporeality, transcendentalism, realism.