The figure of the Other-being in Merleau-Ponty: an alternative to the Foucauldian conception of the Other as "thought of the Same"

Abstract

In this paper, I propose to draw two considerations regarding the ontological notion of the brute being, present in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late philosophy: (i) that the aforementioned notion can be understood according to the irreducibility of Being to our linguistic instruments and, in this sense, consists of a being-Other that, in a raw and permanently wild state, never allows itself to be enclosed in the domain of the word; (ii) assuming that the "ultimate support of all things" ineluctably becomes the otherness of that which is phenomenally manifested to us, leaving only an indirect access to the Absolute considered in a non-substantial way, we suggest the inference that such allusive access cannot be restricted to the verbal regime, given that any path that directs us in this direction of ontogenesis always lacks preeminence and, for this very reason, it becomes incoherent to presuppose and agree with a privilege of the word. We assert, then, that the non-verbal expressive routes must be able to lead (each in its own way) to a certain contact with the Other-being. We will try to situate the interpretations of some specialists in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy on this point, as well as to briefly introduce a possible framing of this philosophy according to Michel Foucault's analysis of modern discourses, with the intention of offering an alternative to the interpretation of the notion of brute being as one more figure of the thought of the Same, thus reaffirming the radical alterity of the being-Other that foreshadows, we believe, our author's late ontology.