Chimeric Mimicry : Reflection and Animality in Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature

Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to understand how Merleau-Ponty views the relation between nature and reflection, as well as the meaning behind the terms “human” and “animal” and the relations between them. I approach this by outlining the transition from Merleau-Ponty’s early philosophy (SB, PP) to his late philosophy (N, VI). Roughly understood as the shift from inquiries into the nature of experience to inquiries into the experience of nature. I show that this shift or turn can be understood in terms of a reconsideration of the nature of experience, which opens toward non-human animal reflection; to the simultaneous kinship and estrangement in animal interspecificity. The paper is divided into three parts: In the first part, oriented around Phenomenology of Perception, I outline the grounding of reflection in the co-natural corporeity of perception. In the second part, I present the implications of Merleau-Ponty’s turn to nature through his reading of Schelling. What becomes visible here is his reversal of method following his turn to nature. Essentially, this reversal of method tempts a reconsideration of reflection: reflection is no longer separated from nature, but a fold within nature itself; a dehiscence of the flesh opening a “mirroring reflexive” within nature itself as nature’s self-reflection, exemplified through the sensing-sensible human body. In the third part, the same reversal of method is considered in relation to animality. I contrast Merleau-Ponty’s account of life and animality in his second course on nature against his views in The Structure of Behavior. Consequently, his account of the grounding of reflection in the corporeity of perception is deepened and his ontology of sensing-sensible is further clarified. In the last sections of the third part, I discuss Merleau-Ponty’s account of the human-animal relation, I then briefly discuss his account of painting as a privileged form of ontological expression, and I finally speculate openly about the alterity of other animals and the possibility of animal philosophies.