Sedimentation and Primal Habituality. Merleau-Ponty on the Relation of Culture and Nature Cover Image

Szedimentáció és őshabitualitás. Merleau-Ponty kultúra és természet viszonyáról
Sedimentation and Primal Habituality. Merleau-Ponty on the Relation of Culture and Nature

Author(s): Dávid Flórián Schmal
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem
Keywords: Merleau-Ponty; Nature; Culture; Repression; Habituality; Sedimentation

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I examine the relation between nature and culture in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. According to Merleau-Ponty, these concepts should not be reduced to one another. Instead, their continuity and difference must be conceived simultaneously. After tracing the transformations of this relation throughout his oeuvre, I return to a line of argument in Phenomenology of Perception, where the habitual character of our bodily being-in-the-world is interpreted through the phenomenon of repression. On this basis, I argue that (1) nature itself can be understood as a form of habituality, and (2) consequently, we must distinguish between two kinds of repression and two kinds of habituality: on the one hand, the process of cultural sedimentation, and on the other, the repression of a past that “has never been present,” which constitutes nature as primordial habituality.

  • Issue Year: 18/2025
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 93-108
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Hungarian
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