ABSTRACT
Merleau-Ponty states in 1960 that “our age calls for a philosophical re-interpretation” (Signs 13). This is perhaps even truer today, since we are still living with what was so clearly perceived by Merleau-Ponty more than fifty years ago. He saw (or foresaw and contributed to) the decline of the modernist world view, the view that there is one rational world, that there is only one rational or logical system that the world obeys, and that both are more or less already completed and fully formed. Merleau-Ponty must certainly be regarded as one of the first multiculturalists, since he claims that we must broaden (not eliminate) our notion of rationality, that we must situate it within the context of multiple perspectives, that we must treat rationality as only lateral (with different individuals and groups sharing meanings that are nevertheless not identical for all of them), and as something that continues to unfold in a process of noncoercive and mutually respectful dialogue. 1 Since the appearance of his work (but not necessarily because of it), others have taken the criticism of modernism to an extreme, calling into question all rational structure. What we find today is that some still cling to 102modernism, while many embrace various forms of postmodernism. Merleau-Ponty tips towards postmodernism but does not go quite as far as most. In fact it is probably best to say that he develops a philosophy that lies in the space between them, and it will be meaningful to trace how it does so.
