A LOGIC WITHIN CONTINGENCY: MERLEAU-PONTY ON THE HISTORICAL A PRIORI
A LOGIC WITHIN CONTINGENCY: MERLEAU-PONTY ON THE HISTORICAL A PRIORI

Summary/Abstract: This paper develops a systematic reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s implicit conception of the historical a priori within the scope of his philosophy of existence. We argue that Merleau-Ponty reconfigures the historical a priori as grounded in facticity, temporalized within lived time, and inseparable from socio-historical, linguistic, and embodied conditions of experience. Drawing on his notions of radical situatedness, generative phenomenology, and history, the paper continues to show that the notion of historical a priori functions in his philosophy as a node that mediates between embodied subjectivity and historically contingent horizons of sense. Understood as a ‘logic within contingency,’ it structures experience without assuming the form of timeless or apodictic necessity.

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