Influenced by Kojève's interpretation of Hegel as well
as his direct political experience of the second world war, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
abandoned the religious and philosophical position he had assumed in the 1930s and
turned to Marxism. This is the first critical study of the French philosopher's
political ideas and the context in which they evolved.
In its origin and
its development, Merleau-Ponty's political thought expressed a subtle dialectic
between ongoing political events and the apparent truths of Marx's analysis.
With the onset of the cold war, the discovery of the Soviet concentration camps, the
repression of Eastern Europe, the Algerian crisis, and the founding of the Fifth
Republic, Merleau-Ponty began to take a critical look at Marx's ideas of the
genesis of humanism in the light of these disturbing political realities. His
reconsideration of the basis of Marxism and his conclusion that it had lost contact
with history led to a fundamental reorientation of his attitudes. No longer
sympathetic to the use of violence to end violence, he criticized Sartre's
external justification of communist violence as 'magical' and advocated
instead a new liberalism combining parliamentary democracy with an awareness of the
social problems of industrial capitalism.
Barry Cooper's study of this
important contemporary thinker gives context for an understanding of Merleau-
Ponty's politics and, in so doing, brings together the complex issues and ideas
that have shaped modern European political and philosophical thought.
