Childlike Peace in Merleau-Ponty and Levinas
Intersubjectivity as Dialectical Spiral
By (author) Brock Bahler
Not available to order
Publication date:
01 August 2016Length of book:
236 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498518505
Childlike Peace in Merleau-Ponty and Levinas argues that the primordial structure of our personal encounters with others should be understood as a dialectical spiral. Drawing on the work of twentieth-century philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas, and informed by recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and child development, Brock Bahler develops a phenomenological description of the parent-child relationship in order to articulate an account of intersubjectivity that is fundamentally ethically oriented, dialogical, and mutually dynamic. This dialectical spiral—in contrast to Cartesian tradition of the subject and the Hegelian master-slave dialectic—suggests that our lives are equiprimordially interwoven with both the richness of mutual engagement and the responsibility to be for-the-other. The parent-child relationship provides the basis for a theoretical account of intersubjectivity that is marked by a creative interaction between self and other that cannot be reduced to an economic exchange, a totalizing structure, or a unilateral asymmetrical responsibility.
In conversation with the philosophical thought of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Hegel, Sartre, and Freud, as well as recent research in cognitive neuroscience and child development, this work will be of interest for those working in the fields of continental philosophy, embodied cognition, philosophy of childhood, psychoanalysis, psychology, philosophy for children (P4C), and education.
In conversation with the philosophical thought of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Hegel, Sartre, and Freud, as well as recent research in cognitive neuroscience and child development, this work will be of interest for those working in the fields of continental philosophy, embodied cognition, philosophy of childhood, psychoanalysis, psychology, philosophy for children (P4C), and education.
Brock Bahler follows the traces of Levinas’ and Merleau-Ponty’s thinking about intersubjectivity, alterity, and ethics, but by treading an unconventional path: he looks for the relationship between self and other and its ethical call in the original bond between infants and parents. It is exciting to follow the spiral of his thought ever deeper into the congruencies and divergences of these philosophers’ thoughts, but always through the touchstone of human primary intersubjectivity. Philosophy encounters developmental psychology and is enriched through contact with its research findings and concepts. Developmental psychology is integrated into philosophical discourse and it suddenly stands in the history of thought as a way of exploring the beginning and unfolding of human consciousness, intersubjectivity, and ethics. Along the way, Bahler offers a thoughtful and convincing ethical account of intersubjectivity as a dialectical spiral, which values the bodily and historical situatedness of the encounter while also preserving the other’s alterity and surplus.