Merleauponty And The Essence Of Nature A Return To Elemental Symbolism Taylor Knight by Taylor Knight 9781399529891, 1399529897 instant download after payment.

-Evaluates and builds upon Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to the twentieth century return to the Greek idea of nature as a dynamic principle

-Utilizes the phenomenological tradition to offer a new interpretation of the relationship between philosophy and its origin in mythological modes of thought

-Integrates Merleau-Ponty into the history of philosophy

-Articulates a new ontology for the ecological age

-Presents the first book-length study of a key concept in Merleau-Ponty’s late thought: the idea of being as element

Taylor Knight reveals the way in which phenomenology initiates a return to ontology construed through a dialectical relationship between being and element. Within phenomenology’s return to the elemental, Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy is a key locus, opening critical paths forward into an ontology for the ecological age. With reference to his phenomenological forebears - Heidegger, Husserl, Levinas - his non-phenomenological influences - Bachelard, Schelling, Freud - and his dialogue with Greek thought - Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle – Knight shows what is authentically new in Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology.

Foreword by Emmanuel Falque

Introduction: The Return to the Element

1. The Powers of Becoming: Early Greek Thought and Contemporary Biology in Merleau-Ponty’s Elemental Ontology

2. The Correlation of Sensation: From Act to Power

3. The Elemental Bond: Surpassing Phenomenological Atomism

4. Cosmogonic Elementals in Phenomenology: From Husserl and Heidegger to Levinas and Merleau-Ponty

5. The Savagery of the Symbol: The Barbarian Principle and Elemental Negation

6. Symbolics of the Flesh: From Tautegory to Chiasm

7. What the Sea Left Behind: The Element as the Unconscious

Conclusion