Merleau-Ponty and Marxism

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.