Merleau-Ponty deployed whataboutery to defend Soviet flaws against Western abuses

Evidence

Merleau-Ponty, in the first flush of his commissar period, responded to Koestler’s essay with a two-part attack in Les Temps modernes entitled ‘The Yogi and the Proletarian’. He mainly used the rhetorical device sometimes known as ‘what-aboutery’: so the Soviet goal was flawed, but what about the many abuses of the West? What about capitalist greed, colonial repression, poverty and racism? What about the West’s pervasive violence, which was merely better disguised than its Communist equivalent? — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 778

Categorization

• SHARE: Merleau-Ponty, of all phenomenologists, using the now-familiar ‘whataboutism’ move in the 1940s is a nice tidbit for anyone interested in rhetoric or Cold War intellectual debate.
• XREF: connects to: The Korean War and Soviet camp revelations reversed Merleau-Ponty and Sartre’s relative Communist sympathies — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 802

Broader Connections

• The Korean War and Soviet camp revelations reversed Merleau-Ponty and Sartre’s relative Communist sympathies #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 802