ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the mature thought of Merleau-Ponty by way of the symbol known as the uroboros. Both the symbol and numerous concepts of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, like that of flesh, reversibility, and autochthonous organization, offer means of reconciling seemingly irreconcilable ideas like time and eternity, potentiality and actuality, origin and telos, as well as other metaphysical oppositions. Furthermore, the chapter explores this image as one of Carl Jung’s preferred symbols of wholeness, one that might even help to reconcile the dueling philosophies of Husserlian phenomenology and Derridean deconstruction. In doing so, this chapter offers a more integral understanding of language than what deconstruction puts forth.
