Merleau-Ponty's Pragmatist Ethics

Utilizing a characterization of pragmatism drawn from Joseph Margolis, and with reference to the thought of C. S. Peirce and John Dewey, this paper first exposes a pragmatist conception of rationality within the French philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It then explores how this praxical, biologically rooted understanding of rationality leads Merleau-Ponty to espouse the same broadly pragmatist conception of ethical life that we find in a recent work from Joseph Margolis: one that repudiates fixed principles and absolute ends in order to prompt us, under the pressing exigencies of life, to learn from radically different ways of thinking, thus committing us to negotiating peaceful solutions to our moral and political conflicts across diverse rational perspectives in a manner that, although taking us far from any form of objectivism, nevertheless refuses to renounce all claims to objectivity