We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
THE SITUATION OF THE PHILOSOPHER
Is the philosophy of our age, Sartre asks, dead or alive? Must we cultivate the field or raze the moldering edifice? Yet thought rejects stark choices of this kind. We know full well that Marx did not demolish Hegel, that Kant did not leave Cartesianism in ruins. How could a serious assessment of Marxism be captured in a simple verdict? Consider instead what Merleau-Ponty tells us in the Introduction to Signs:
The history of thought does not summarily pronounce: This is true; that is false. Like all history, it has its veiled decisions. It dismantles or embalms certain doctrines, changing them into “messages” or museum pieces. There are others, on the contrary, which it keeps active. These do not endure because there is somemiraculous adequation or correspondence between them and an invariable “reality” – such an exact and fleshless truth is neither sufficient nor necessary for the greatness of a doctrine – but because, as obligatory steps for those who want to go further, they retain an expressive power which exceeds their statements and propositions.
Or again: “We are saying that a reexamination of Marx would be a meditation upon a classic, and that it could not possibly terminate in a nihil obstat or a listing on the Index” (S 16–17/10–11).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
