Merleau-Ponty on the Inconsistencies of God; a Critique

Alavi Tabar, Hedayat

Merleau-Ponty on the Inconsistencies of God; a Critique

Document Type : Research Article

Author

Hedayat Alavi Tabar

Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Allameh Tabatabai University

Abstract

Merleau-Ponty sees the notion of God, as the Necessary Being, as incompatible with the foundations of his philosophy. According to him, everything in the world is contingent and this contingency is the reason why all things in the world are unexplained, obscure and, therefore, wondrous. But given the existence of a necessary being, i.e. God, theology explains all things and dispels any wonderment. Further, the existence of God takes away the freedom of human beings, because the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient being reduces man to an object and leaves no room for his creative activity. Thus theology which wants to explain and necessitate all beings and reach certainty is contrasted with philosophy which tries to maintain the contingency, obscurity and wonderment of being. On the other hand, the belief in God makes ethics impossible, because the appeal to the absolute, including God, leads to an ethics that is based on absolute values and this ethics is worthy of gods not human beings. The human ethics is based on relative values. The rest of the article deals with the view of Merleau-Ponty’s critics.

Keywords

God

Contingency

Freedom

Philosophy

Ethics

منابع

1- وال، ژان، بحث در مابعدالطبیعه، ترجمة یحیی مهدوی، تهران، خوارزمی، 1370.

2- De Petter, L’existence de Dieu, Tourani, 1961.

3- Fabro, Cornelio, God in Exile: A Study of the Internal Dynamic of Modern Atheism, trans. Arthur Gibson, Westminster, Maryland: Newman, 1964.

4- Kingston, Fredrick, French Existentialism: a Christian Critique, London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1961.

5- Kwant, Remy, the Phenomenological Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Pittsburgh: DuquesneUniversity Press, 1963.

6- Lowry, Atherton, »Merleau-Ponty and the Absence of God«, Philosophy Today, 22 (1978) pp. 119- 126.

7- Luijpen, William, Phenomenology and Atheism, Pittsburgh: DuquesneUniversity Press, 1965.

8- Marcel, Gabriel, “Dieu et la causalite”, De la connaissance de Dieu, Recherches de philosophie, Paris, 1958.

9- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, “l’homme et l’adversite” and “ Deuxieme entretien prive”, La connaissance de l’homme au XX siecle, Recontres internationales de Geneve, 1951.

10- --------------- Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.

11- ---------------- In Praise of Philosophy, trans. J. Wild and J. Edie Evanston: Northwestern. University Press, 1963.

12- --------------- Sense and Nonsense, trans. Hubert Dreyfus & Patricia Allen Dreyfus, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

13- --------------- Signs, trans. Richard McCleary, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964

14- Miceli, Vincent, the Gods of Atheism, New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1971.

Send comment about this article

Name *

Enter Name.

Email Address *

Enter a valid email address.

Affiliation *

Enter a vaid affiliation.