Beauvoir may have steered Merleau-Ponty toward the body-subject concept

Evidence

Merleau-Ponty, it seems, from Beauvoir’s diaries, leaned this way at the time. However, when he focuses on the notion of the body-subject in his Phenomenology of Perception, he meets with approval by Beauvoir (see the earlier part of this chapter). Could she have infl uenced Merleau-Ponty and steered him toward a notion of the body-subject that moves him away from such early rationalism? — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 119

Categorization

• QUESTION: A reverse-influence hypothesis: not just Sartre-Beauvoir but Beauvoir’s possible influence on Merleau-Ponty.
• XREF: Reverses the standard influence arrow; relevant to the whole historiographical authorship debate. — connects to: Beauvoir’s philosophical apprenticeship was shaped by intellectual humility before Merleau-Ponty — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 370; Merleau-Ponty pioneered embodied cognition by centering the body and perception in philosophy — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1026; Beauvoir may have misread Sartre through Merleau-Ponty’s interpretive lens — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 212

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir may have misread Sartre through Merleau-Ponty’s interpretive lens #complicates (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 212