Ontology and intersubjectivity as seen from the Sartre/MerleauPonty debate

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore how Sartre and Merleau-Ponty diverge on two planes that are essential to the formation of their respective philosophical approaches: ontology, and their understanding of intersubjectivity as a fundamental instance of human existence. In the works of both of these authors, these two planes are closely related. For Sartre, the ontological opposition between the in-itself and for-itself, set out in Being and Nothingness, finds a correlate in a conception of intersubjectivity that arises from the inevitability of conflict and the absence of any opportunity for mutual recognition among men. Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of Sartre’s ontology, meanwhile, locates its correlate in a critique of a conception of intersubjectivity based on conflict as an originating dimension of relations with others. This essay focuses on texts written by these two authors in the 1940s: for Sartre, principally some chapters from Being and Nothingness; for Merleau-Ponty, the Phenomenology of Perception and some of the articles included in Sense and Nonsense.