Natureza e Ontologia em Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

We present Merleau-Ponty’s indirect ontology in order to highlight the influence of Friedrich Schelling, Ferdinand de Saussure and Alfred North Whitehead. In other words, the research seeks to examine the ontology of the Être Brut from the standpoint of Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, Saussure’s structuralism and Whitehead’s metaphysics. From then on, we pursue our main goal, namely, to demonstrate the discrepancy between the ontology of Flesh and the ontology developed during the 1940’s. In short, through the examination of what is outlined in The Visible and the Invisible and Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France it is shown the incompatibility of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology from the 1950’s and the one advanced in The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception.