another reader nomination

Another reader submits a “most overrated” nominee. Name withheld, of course:

“You certainly have everyone buzzing with this question. I guess there is a load of worried people thinking Harman is going to pick the philosopher that I devoted my life to!

Here’s a candidate. Merleau-Ponty

I quite like Merleau Ponty. I think he he gave a great presentation of phenomenological ideas. I think he also has great merits as a populiser of phenomenology. However, much of this comes from Husserl’s Ideas 2 any way. He is not as original as everyone thinks he is, all is ideas are presented constitently in Husserl, Bergson, even Nietzsche and as far back as Hegel. His later work remains unfortunately unfulfilled. According to your criteria he is recent, he has work that has a lot of merit. Perhaps he hasn’t been usually called one of the greatest philosophers, but he would certainly be considered one of the greatest phenomenologists. Since phenomenology is often considered one of the key breakthrough’s in recent philosophy there is some disjuntion there.”

I’ve written positively about Merleau-Ponty in Guerrilla Metaphysics. But I have a few gripes with him as well. One is that I think he only partly deserves his reputation as a luscious stylist. I’ve praised his style before, but I was oversimplifying a bit and leaving out the bad side of it.

The good part is that Merleau-Ponty comes up with some of the most remarkable phrases and images that you’ll ever find in any philosopher. His phenomenological descriptions are quite often fantastic.

Nonetheless, his prose taken as a whole is surprisingly stuffy and academic. It’s as though the Muse were inspiring wild and beautiful outbursts every couple of pages, but then he goes back to being a straightforward academic the rest of the time.

He’s not entirely alone in this. I think Husserl is also underrated as a creator of marvellous images and even jokes. But there’s a difference between them. Husserl is less of a poet than Merleau-Ponty, to be sure. But his normal prose sections have a slightly more lucid tone (even when highly technical) than Merleau-Ponty’s.