Merleau-Ponty Against Eschatology
Abstract
This paper attempts to show that there are resources in the work of Merleau-Ponty to both show how the extension of the teleological structure of perception to history issues in a profound misunderstanding of history, as being structured teleologically, as having an ultimate goal. In addition, it elaborates an alternative conception of history, which rejects the nihilistic conception of history as meaningless, as one damn thing after another. It elaborates a conception of history as having neither arch nor telos but rather “beginning in the middle of things” as finding finite centers of meaning. It continues by evoking Charles Taylor’s remark that “man is an interpreting animal”, and then proceeds to show how in Western history, various philosophers have explained how it is that, by and large, man is a misinterpreting animal. Each philosopher is viewed as offering an explanation of how we misinterpret our selves, the world and history, and suggests at least implicitly, a corrective to this misinterpretation, motivated either by the structure of our minds or our history. It proceeds to a reflection on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of Advent of and Claude Lefort’s conception of the regime, and ends by evoking the pernicious political effects of a belief in a teleology of history, as motivating the notion of Manifest Destiny and the contemporary movement of white Christian nationalism, for whom Trump represents the providential direction of history.