Reasons for an Absence: Institution and Politics in Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

The article derives from a perplexing situation. It brings a remarkable absence in the well-known lectures of Merleau-Ponty on Institution to attention: There is no mention of politics as an institution. Therefore, the article raises the following question: why the course does not deal with politics like it does with life, culture or history? To answer this question, the article addresses the relations between the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and politics. Thus, the purpose of the article is to find the reason behind the contradictory link that Merleau-Ponty develops for politics in the lectures on Institution, that is, a profound concern over political issues that do not find theoretical considerations as complement. First, it considers the link with the philosophy of history of the Hegelian-Marxist tradition. Second, it identifies a political moment of his philosophy linked to Machiavelli. Then, it highlights the reasons behind the disconnection between Merleau-Ponty’s Machiavellian view of politics and the original perspective on institution. Finally, it addresses the question of whether such disconnection, which in the lectures becomes an absence, does not signal towards a different way to think politics linked to other concepts of the thought of Merleau-Ponty: Life, time and institution. These concepts were developed by him to undermine the predominance of the philosophies of reflection, which can expand new horizons regarding politics and the connection between the instituting and the instituted.