Opening a crack in modern metaphysics: conjecture on Merleau-Ponty’s project from the Course L’Instituition

Abstract

This   paper   aims   to   present   the   notion   of   institution   in   Merleau-Ponty’sthought, first shown in the 1954–1955 course at the Collège de France. Themain purpose was to expose the reflections on institution as a central part of the philosopher’s effort to move away from “modern metaphysics” or “phi-losophy   of   consciousness.”   First,   a   characterization   of   “modern   meta-physics” was made, taking as base Heidegger’s reflections about the Carte-sian cogito. It was pointed out some contact points amongst this reading ofHeidegger   and   the   criticism   mobilized   by   Merleau-Ponty   to   move   awayfrom metaphysics based on the aprioristic separation between subject andobject. The notion of institution is, then, presented as an alternative, whichwas proposed by the French thinker, like an effort to produce a new descrip-tion of the world. A description capable of drawing the relations betweenthe instituting subject and the world, the alterity, the action and time, not asa relation of the object’s domination by the subject, but of mutual belongingof a subject that is, simultaneously, instituting the world and being institutedby it. At the end of this course, it proved possible to unfold the notion of in-stitution over Merleau-Ponty’s own work, indicating the perennial tensionof the philosopher with modern metaphysics and the successive institutionof new fields as alternatives to the seizure of the world by the conscious-ness.