Merleau-Ponty's Human-Animality Intertwining and the Animal Question

Louise Westling, University of Oregon Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late work locates humans within a wild or brute being that sustains a synergy among life forms. His Nature lectures explored the philosophical implications of evolutionary biology and animal studies, and with The Visible and the Invisible describe a horizontal kinship between humans and other animals. This work offers a striking alternative to Heidegger's panicky insistence on an abyss between humans and other animals that Derrida questions but cannot seem to discard. For Merleau-Ponty, literary works probe the invisible realm of wildness that is our only environment, a realm full of language and meaningfully experienced by all animals.