Phenomenology and the Primacy of the Political

Essays in Honor of Jacques Taminiaux

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The phrase “the primacy of the political” echoes the “primacy of perception” as it was famously defined by Merleau-Ponty. This book emphasizes, however, the inescapability of the political rather than its “foundational” character, i.e. the fact that various itineraries of thought, explored in different fields of phenomenological research, give rise to politically relevant reflections. It points out and elucidates political connotations that haunt phenomenological concepts, such as ‘world’, ‘self’, ‘nature’, ‘intersubjectivity, or ‘language’, and traces them to a broad range of approaches, concepts, and methods. In its explorations, the book discusses a broad range of thinkers, including, but not limited to, Aristotle and Kant, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Arendt.