Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty: Toward a Process Phenomenology (SUNY series in American Philosophy and Cultural Thought)

A comprehensive synthesis of the thought of Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty. Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty sets out to answer a simple question: "What kind of phenomenologist is Merleau-Ponty?" While debates regarding the status of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology typically fall along transcendental or existential lines, author Andrew Kirkpatrick shows how Merleau-Ponty's thought fails to fit neatly within either category.Drawing on Whitehead's process metaphysics, he demonstrates how Merleau-Ponty's thought transcends the limitations of both transcendental and existential descriptions and results in a new style of phenomenology altogether: a process phenomenology.More than just a Whiteheadian reading of Merleau-Ponty, this is a synthesis that also offers novel insights into Whiteheadian thought.It is in this sense that the question "What kind of phenomenologist was Merleau-Ponty?" also results in a novel interpretation of Whitehead.In uniting Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological description of liv