First Nature. The Problem of Nature in the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty

Alessio Rotundo obtained his doctorate in philosophy from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh in 2020. He studied philosophy at the University of Turin in Italy, the University of Heidelberg in Germany, the University of Kentucky under the Baden-Württemberg Stipendium, and at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris supported by the Bourse Chateaubriand. He has served as Adjunct Professor at Xavier University of Louisiana and Loyola University New Orleans. His research interests and publications focus on topics in twentieth-century Continental philosophy and the history of modern and contemporary philosophy, especially in the fields of phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics.

List of Abbreviations



Introduction: Stating the Problem

 1 Preliminary Remarks

 2 Historical Contextualization

 3 Renewed Setting of the Problem



1 Natura Sub Specie Structurae

 1 Science between Technocracy and Aesthetics

 2 The Disinterested and the Interested Onlooker

 3 Naturizing and Naturized Consciousness

 4 Phenomenology between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty



2 Pathway to First Nature

 Operative Intentionality from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty

 1 Introduction

 2 Phenomenology as Redoing of Transcendental Philosophy

 3 Cartesian “Realism”

 4 The Genetic Turn in Phenomenology

 5 Operative Intentionality

 6 Brief Methodic Reflection on the “Idea of Being” in Phenomenology

 7 The Prejudice of the World

 8 Operative Intentionality as Temporalizing

 9 The Project of the Phenomenology of Perception as Enquiry into Operative Intentionality

 10 The Discovery of Contingency and Transcendental Philosophy: Descartes and Kant

 11 The Body Schema: Phenomenology of Perception I

 12 The Notion of Spatial Level: Phenomenology of Perception II

 13 Merleau-Ponty and Kant on Space



3 Orders of Experience

 1 Introduction: The Eidetic of Experience and Language

 2 Approaches to Language

 3 The Act of Speech

 4 Language as Ontological Experience

 5 Speaking of Fundamentals: The Promise of Language

 6 Language and the Lifeworld: General Points from Phenomenology

 7 The Problem of Einströmen

 8 The Modal Ontology of the World

 9 History in Lifeworld Phenomenology



4 Mundus Sensibilis

 Structural Ontology between Merleau-Ponty and the New Philosophy of Science

 1 Introduction

 2 Ontic Structural Realism

 3 Syntactic and Semantic Views

 4 Invariance between Physics and Phenomenology

 5 Physics Deformalized

 6 Observation and Objectivation

 7 The Passage of Nature

 8 Natural Dynamis between Physics and Perception

 9 The Praxis of Nature, or What the Things Do



5 Nature and Logos

 1 Introduction: Animal Nature

 2 Biology and Ontology

 3 Organic Totality

 4 The Ontology of the Umwelt: Uexküll’s Notion of Umwelt

 5 Behavior, Consciousness, and World

 6 The Bivalent Ontology of the Umwelt

 7 The Sphere of Life as Sphere of Intercorporeity

 8 Towards a Philosophy in Double Dimensionality: Merleau-Ponty’s Esthesiology



6 The Institution of Nature

 1 Introduction: Phenomenological Ontology and the Institution of Nature

 2 Nature as Empirical and Transcendental Genesis

 3 Towards Totality: Perceptual Faith and the Flesh

 4 Tying It All Together: Nature as Leaf of Being



Bibliographical References and Works Cited

Index