a paper to be presented at the central APA on the Dreyfus-McDowell debate:
Andreas Elpidorou (Boston University): “The Upsurge of Spontaneity: The Role and Place of Merleau-Ponty in the Dreyfus-McDowell Debate.” Paper 2 in Session II-F, ‘Continental Philosophy’ (Friday 9:00 a.m.)
Elpidorou's abstract from the proceedings:
In a multifaceted debate between Dreyfus and McDowell, Merleau-Ponty has been unambiguously placed on the side of the former. In line with Dreyfus, Merleau-Ponty holds that conceptual activity is founded upon a pre-thematic and unreflective engagement with the world. Spontaneity, they both agree, is the result of the transformation of the non-conceptual to the conceptual. In what follows, I argue that Dreyfus's account of this transformation is only partially in agreement with the one advanced by Merleau-Ponty. More explicitly, I demonstrate that whereas Dreyfus holds that the difference between the nonconceptual and the conceptual is a difference in kind, Merleau-Ponty puts forth a more nuanced explanation of the relationship between the two: Namely, by arguing that the two differ both in degree and in kind, Merleau-Ponty does away with the exclusive dualism that Dreyfus inherits by maintaining a difference in kind, which is a radical or categorical difference.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
I haven't read Merleau-Ponty that much, but I always suspected that something like this was the case. After all, "founded on" could mean anything - it doesn't mean that if A is "founded on" B, then the difference between A and B must be dualistically construed.
Thanks for the tip!
Post a Comment