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The Place of Animal Being: Following Animal Embryogenesis and Navigation to the Hollow of Being in Merleau-Ponty

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The Place of Animal Being: Following Animal Embryogenesis and Navigation to the Hollow of Being in Merleau-Ponty

Morris, David (2010) The Place of Animal Being: Following Animal Embryogenesis and Navigation to the Hollow of Being in Merleau-Ponty. Research in Phenomenology, 40 (2). pp. 188-218. ISSN 0085-5553

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156916410X509922

Abstract

This article pursues overlapping points about ontology, philosophical method, and our kinship with and difference from nonhuman animals. The ontological point is that being is determinately different in different places not because of differences, or even a space, already given in advance, but in virtue of a negative in being that is regional and rooted in place, which Merleau-Ponty calls the “hollow.” The methodological point is that we tend to miss this ontological point because we are inclined to what I call transportable thinking, which conceives of things and spatial determinacy itself as being what they are independent of where they are. I argue that we are inclined this way because, in contrast to other animals, we have a weak sense of where we are. We are lost animals. To compensate for lostness, we abstract ourselves from place and conceptualize ourselves and things by way of a transportable, Cartesian “view from above.”

Divisions:Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Philosophy
Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Authors:Morris, David
Journal or Publication:Research in Phenomenology
Date:2010
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):10.1163/156916410X509922
Keywords:Merleau-Ponty, animals, phenomenology, place, differance, ontology
ID Code:6804
Deposited By: David Morris
Deposited On:03 Aug 2010 16:07
Last Modified:18 Jan 2018 17:29
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