MERLEAU-PONTY AND THE POLITICAL TURN OF TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY

In this article we identify French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty as one of the key figures in what we call the "political turn" in twentieth-century philosophy, i.e. in the movement that radically confronts the original and problematic character of social life - its extraordinary mobility, its extreme contingency, the ever-present element of conflict, its involvment with all aspects of the human condition, etc.-- We start from the distinction between "political philosophy" and "philosophy of the political", concerning ourselves in particular with the meaning of the second notion, from a phenomenological perspective. We then develop several strands of Merelau-Ponty"s reflection about the "political", in the general context of his work and of his fundamental philosophical ideas, showing the consistency of his basic positions with recent political thought and showing their importance for a radical rethinking of the sense of the political and of the sense of the relationship between philosophy and politics in our era.