Marxism and philosophy

some considerations on Merleau-Pontyan post-war political texts

Abstract

Merleau-Ponty's attempt to approach Marxism, undertaken in the post-war years, is passed through by continuous ambiguity. Notwithstanding the philosopher's purpose of joining the Marxist theory, his political analysis are far from his intentions. Conceiving history as an "adventure" which escapes any rational scheme, Merleau-Ponty questions, since his first writings, Marxist dialectics between logic and contingency in history. The inner tension that lacerates the author's texts during the 40's, proclaiming (and preparing) the refusal of the theory of revolution, which would later appear in The Adventures of the Dialectics, permits us to inquire wheter the dénouement of the 50's would not have been - instead of a cutting in the heart of the work - the necessary result of this problematic attempt to approach Marxism, departing from categories which are alien to it (suitable to philosophies of existence and to phenomenology).