David Morris
I received my M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. My main interests are in phenomenology (esp. Merleau-Ponty) with a focus on the philosophy of the body, mind and nature in relation to current biology and cognitive science. My other interests include Hegel (in relation to 19th century German Idealism), Bergson, and ancient (esp. Aristotle) and modern philosophy.
My most recent book is Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology (2018), in Northwestern University Press's Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy Series, and winner of the 2020 Edwin Ballard Prize, awarded by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology for an outstanding book in phenomenology . This book advances my ongoing study of the problem of the genesis of meaning and sense, in relation to biological and perceptual phenomena. This has led me into my current project, which pursues new ways of conceptualizing time (and also place) so as to arrive at a new view of meaning as at once intrinsically arising with nature, yet contingently so. This also leads to new ways of thinking about nature.
Most of my publications are listed below, and are uploaded here, or are available via Concordia's SPECTRUM open access repository--see the links. My book The Sense of Space was published by SUNY Press in 2004.
I am currently General Secretary of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle, on the Executive of Committee of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Continental Philosophy Review, and the editorial board of Concordia University Press. I am currently Graduate Program Director of the Humanities PhD program.
My most recent book is Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology (2018), in Northwestern University Press's Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy Series, and winner of the 2020 Edwin Ballard Prize, awarded by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology for an outstanding book in phenomenology . This book advances my ongoing study of the problem of the genesis of meaning and sense, in relation to biological and perceptual phenomena. This has led me into my current project, which pursues new ways of conceptualizing time (and also place) so as to arrive at a new view of meaning as at once intrinsically arising with nature, yet contingently so. This also leads to new ways of thinking about nature.
Most of my publications are listed below, and are uploaded here, or are available via Concordia's SPECTRUM open access repository--see the links. My book The Sense of Space was published by SUNY Press in 2004.
I am currently General Secretary of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle, on the Executive of Committee of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Continental Philosophy Review, and the editorial board of Concordia University Press. I am currently Graduate Program Director of the Humanities PhD program.
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Books by David Morris
David Morris first gives an illuminating analysis of sense, showing how it requires understanding nature as engendering new norms. He then presents innovative studies of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, revealing how these early works are oriented by the problem of sense and already lead to difficulties about nature, temporality, and ontology that preoccupy Merleau-Ponty's later work. Morris shows how resolving these difficulties requires seeking sense through its appearance in nature, prior to experience—ultimately leading to radically new concepts of nature, time, and philosophy.
Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology makes key issues in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy clear and accessible to a broad audience while also advancing original philosophical conclusions.
Reviews:
"Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology is simply a great book. Morris's accounts of life and nature are creative and deeply philosophical. I might be exaggerating a little when I say this, but I think this is the best Merleau-Ponty book I have ever read." —Leonard Lawlor, author of Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy
"This book is unique both as a contribution to Merleau-Ponty scholarship and a renewed phenomenological ontology. Drawing mainly on contemporary life sciences and cosmology it presents us with an organic and dynamic view on how meaning and a factual order arise and appear in being, space and time. Hardly ever has the plea for a radical transcendental empiricism, instead of traditional forms of subjectivism, been made as concretely and convincingly." —Rudolf Bernet, author of Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology
"This scintillating text offers two books for the price of one: not only does it offer an insightful and innovative reading of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, early and late, but it also establishes David Morris as an original voice to be heard in its own right. The reader is provided with a rich panoply of new ways of finding sense embedded in experience and in being, and all this in the context of a phenomenology of nature, a new model of 'development' of life and the cosmos, and an inaugural notion of “templacement” that surpasses earlier discussions of space and time and is shown to be the foundation of a radically new ontology. The result is a tour de force in which contemporary immunology and biology and cosmic theory join forces with Merleau-Ponty’s final search for 'wild being.' This is one of the most exciting, intellectually engaging, and profound books of our time." —Edward S. Casey, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, SUNY at Stony Brook; author of The World at a Glance and The World on Edge
“The rich and impressive essays in Time, Memory, Institution make a new and significant contribution to the field, dealing with works of Merleau-Ponty’s that have only recently become available in English.” Jack Reynolds, author of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity
This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole as well as the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist’s views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such, but is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, and that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself.
Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy.
This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty.
Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels
Available in paperback, hardback, and Kindle and GooglePlay editions.
The Sense of Space brings together space and body to show that space is a plastic environment, charged with meaning, that reflects the distinctive character of human embodiment in the full range of its moving, perceptual, emotional, expressive, developmental, and social capacities. Drawing on the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Bergson, as well as contemporary psychology to develop a renewed account of the moving, perceiving body, the book suggests that our sense of space ultimately reflects our ethical relations to other people and to the places we inhabit.
"I like the combination of sober scholarship with imaginative thought and writing. David Morris is fully at home in phenomenology, while being quite knowledgeable of existing and pertinent scientific literature. Having mastered both, he creates a dynamic tension between them, showing how each can fructify the other, albeit in very different ways. The result is truly impressive.
"This is a very rare book in many ways. First, it directly engages scientific literature that treats the experience of space; not since Merleau-Ponty himself has there been a comparable engagement. Second, it institutes a lively debate with this literature that shows how a different model from that of science—including ecological science as practiced by J. J. Gibson and dynamics systems theory—is required in order to avoid positing a ready-made world taken for granted, or else an infinite regress of models. Third, Morris draws in everyday experiences of space and place in order to elucidate the deep problem of depth—a problem that heretofore has not been elucidated so intelligently and imaginatively resolved. Fourth, he adopts a developmental perspective on perception and motion that makes his work virtually unique and that brings additional light to bear on the question of depth. Fifth, Morris explores the implications of his model of depth for the experience of place in human experience—a bold undertaking that succeeds remarkably well. In sum, this is a groundbreaking work." — Edward S. Casey, author of Imagining: A Phenomenological Study, Second Edition
Papers by David Morris
The first section of this paper lays out Meillassoux’s argument in After Finitude. This section also serves to frame the second section, which traces Merleau-Ponty’s route to passivity and his methods of radical reflection and indirect ontology. In turn, this leads to a critique of Meillassoux as taking the activity of thinking for granted, without attending to its passivity, or the ontological implications thereof. One such implication is that we should not confuse being with determinate being—a confusion crucial to Meillassoux’s ancestrality problem. Together, these results show how Meillassoux overlooks indications of radically contingent being within correlation itself. The third section clarifies and supports this claim via physics. Although Meillassoux invokes mathematics and science to advance his position, his treatment of science is schematic and neglects the problem of how mathematics and being connect in the first place. I take up this problem by turning to contemporary cosmology and the difficulties associated with measurement in quantum mechanics, showing how these echo Merleau-Ponty’s concept of an invisible of the visible—of there being something less than determinate being within manifestation.
The chapter suggests perhaps surprising convergences between Meillassoux and Merleau-Ponty around the necessity of contingency, since Merleau-Ponty’s ontology implies that phenomenology, temporality, and being can never have been guaranteed in advance, since being is not determinate. But they sharply diverge on the ontological location of the necessity of contingency: whereas Meillassoux leaps to mathematisable hyper-Chaos, Merleau-Ponty detects it in the invisible depths of being’s contingent manifestation—what I call radical contingency.
This introduction to a special section of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences reviews some historical and contemporary results concerning the role of development in cognition and experience, arguing that at this juncture development is an important topic for research in phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. It then suggests some ways in which the concept of development is in need of rethinking, in relation to the phenomena, and reviews the contributions that articles in the section make toward this purpose.
The special issue has contributions from: Gillian Barker, Noah Moss Brender, Donald Landes, Kym Maclaren, Eva Simms, Talia Welsh
David Morris first gives an illuminating analysis of sense, showing how it requires understanding nature as engendering new norms. He then presents innovative studies of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, revealing how these early works are oriented by the problem of sense and already lead to difficulties about nature, temporality, and ontology that preoccupy Merleau-Ponty's later work. Morris shows how resolving these difficulties requires seeking sense through its appearance in nature, prior to experience—ultimately leading to radically new concepts of nature, time, and philosophy.
Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology makes key issues in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy clear and accessible to a broad audience while also advancing original philosophical conclusions.
Reviews:
"Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology is simply a great book. Morris's accounts of life and nature are creative and deeply philosophical. I might be exaggerating a little when I say this, but I think this is the best Merleau-Ponty book I have ever read." —Leonard Lawlor, author of Early Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy
"This book is unique both as a contribution to Merleau-Ponty scholarship and a renewed phenomenological ontology. Drawing mainly on contemporary life sciences and cosmology it presents us with an organic and dynamic view on how meaning and a factual order arise and appear in being, space and time. Hardly ever has the plea for a radical transcendental empiricism, instead of traditional forms of subjectivism, been made as concretely and convincingly." —Rudolf Bernet, author of Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology
"This scintillating text offers two books for the price of one: not only does it offer an insightful and innovative reading of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, early and late, but it also establishes David Morris as an original voice to be heard in its own right. The reader is provided with a rich panoply of new ways of finding sense embedded in experience and in being, and all this in the context of a phenomenology of nature, a new model of 'development' of life and the cosmos, and an inaugural notion of “templacement” that surpasses earlier discussions of space and time and is shown to be the foundation of a radically new ontology. The result is a tour de force in which contemporary immunology and biology and cosmic theory join forces with Merleau-Ponty’s final search for 'wild being.' This is one of the most exciting, intellectually engaging, and profound books of our time." —Edward S. Casey, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, SUNY at Stony Brook; author of The World at a Glance and The World on Edge
“The rich and impressive essays in Time, Memory, Institution make a new and significant contribution to the field, dealing with works of Merleau-Ponty’s that have only recently become available in English.” Jack Reynolds, author of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity
This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole as well as the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist’s views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such, but is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, and that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself.
Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy.
This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty.
Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels
Available in paperback, hardback, and Kindle and GooglePlay editions.
The Sense of Space brings together space and body to show that space is a plastic environment, charged with meaning, that reflects the distinctive character of human embodiment in the full range of its moving, perceptual, emotional, expressive, developmental, and social capacities. Drawing on the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Bergson, as well as contemporary psychology to develop a renewed account of the moving, perceiving body, the book suggests that our sense of space ultimately reflects our ethical relations to other people and to the places we inhabit.
"I like the combination of sober scholarship with imaginative thought and writing. David Morris is fully at home in phenomenology, while being quite knowledgeable of existing and pertinent scientific literature. Having mastered both, he creates a dynamic tension between them, showing how each can fructify the other, albeit in very different ways. The result is truly impressive.
"This is a very rare book in many ways. First, it directly engages scientific literature that treats the experience of space; not since Merleau-Ponty himself has there been a comparable engagement. Second, it institutes a lively debate with this literature that shows how a different model from that of science—including ecological science as practiced by J. J. Gibson and dynamics systems theory—is required in order to avoid positing a ready-made world taken for granted, or else an infinite regress of models. Third, Morris draws in everyday experiences of space and place in order to elucidate the deep problem of depth—a problem that heretofore has not been elucidated so intelligently and imaginatively resolved. Fourth, he adopts a developmental perspective on perception and motion that makes his work virtually unique and that brings additional light to bear on the question of depth. Fifth, Morris explores the implications of his model of depth for the experience of place in human experience—a bold undertaking that succeeds remarkably well. In sum, this is a groundbreaking work." — Edward S. Casey, author of Imagining: A Phenomenological Study, Second Edition
The first section of this paper lays out Meillassoux’s argument in After Finitude. This section also serves to frame the second section, which traces Merleau-Ponty’s route to passivity and his methods of radical reflection and indirect ontology. In turn, this leads to a critique of Meillassoux as taking the activity of thinking for granted, without attending to its passivity, or the ontological implications thereof. One such implication is that we should not confuse being with determinate being—a confusion crucial to Meillassoux’s ancestrality problem. Together, these results show how Meillassoux overlooks indications of radically contingent being within correlation itself. The third section clarifies and supports this claim via physics. Although Meillassoux invokes mathematics and science to advance his position, his treatment of science is schematic and neglects the problem of how mathematics and being connect in the first place. I take up this problem by turning to contemporary cosmology and the difficulties associated with measurement in quantum mechanics, showing how these echo Merleau-Ponty’s concept of an invisible of the visible—of there being something less than determinate being within manifestation.
The chapter suggests perhaps surprising convergences between Meillassoux and Merleau-Ponty around the necessity of contingency, since Merleau-Ponty’s ontology implies that phenomenology, temporality, and being can never have been guaranteed in advance, since being is not determinate. But they sharply diverge on the ontological location of the necessity of contingency: whereas Meillassoux leaps to mathematisable hyper-Chaos, Merleau-Ponty detects it in the invisible depths of being’s contingent manifestation—what I call radical contingency.
This introduction to a special section of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences reviews some historical and contemporary results concerning the role of development in cognition and experience, arguing that at this juncture development is an important topic for research in phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. It then suggests some ways in which the concept of development is in need of rethinking, in relation to the phenomena, and reviews the contributions that articles in the section make toward this purpose.
The special issue has contributions from: Gillian Barker, Noah Moss Brender, Donald Landes, Kym Maclaren, Eva Simms, Talia Welsh
The danger of general, generative AI is not the technology itself. The danger is that we, and especially the leaders of the AI industry, have already taken thinking to be the sort of ‘intelligence’ that can be generatively stockpiled by AIs. To paraphrase Voltaire, human thinking created AI and AI, in kind, reinvented human thinking as a stockpile of information to be strip-mined for valuable, entrancing, or deceptive and dangerous, information patterns. These patterns are marketed in products that steal and eviscerate human labour. The patterns are circulated as completed end results abstracted from their origins in human dialogue and community; this contributes to the erosion of two capacities crucial to processes of thinking: attention and questioning.
Paper is linked above..
I first lead this problem out of Merleau-Ponty. Next I critically engage with physicist Julian Barbour’s recent concept of time as emerging from dynamics, versus time being a fixed background of dynamics. This provides a helpful conceptual model for the sort of temporality in question here—and fits with and is complemented by Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the invisible and the visible. Barbour leads us into key problems in quantum mechanics, regarding probabilistic, indeterminate being, and measurement. I explore these problems and connect them to time via a model from cryptography, and discussion of how quantum computer programs work (on IBM’s Quantum Experience platform). Linking this with Barbour’s time model lets me suggest a concept of time as a contingent phenomenon that would also be a first norm of sense that fits Merleau-Ponty’s ontology.
M = Paragraph # in Miller’s English translation
B = Page # in Baillie’s English translation
WC = page #.line # in Wessel and Clairmont’s edition, from Felix Meiner
KE = page # in the German critical edition, as given in WC
The lookup function lets you enter a page number or page range in your Source edition, and displays equivalent pages in all other editions. It also shows several citation forms combining these. The citation forms can be customized.
v02 improves the interface, and lets you customize the separator
If you click the link, you can find a version with a macro that will let you specify a citation form that will be automatically copied to the clipboard each time the page numbers change, you will need to enable macros on this file, as a security measure.
-in English, RKP (editions prior to the Routledge Classics 2002), RC (Routledge Classics 2002 edition, with new pagination), RL (Routledge 2013 edition, trans Landes, with NG pagination in margin)
-in French, G (Gallimard, prior to 2005), NG (2e edition from Gallimard, from 2005 on, with new pagination)
The lookup function lets you enter a page number or page range in your Source edition, and displays equivalent pages in all other editions. It also shows several citation forms combining these. The citation forms can be customized.
v02 improves the interface, and lets you customize the separator
If you click the link, you can find a version with a macro that will let you specify a citation form that will be automatically copied to the clipboard each time the page numbers change, you will need to enable macros on this file, as a security measure.
Given a page number in one edition, the concordance will help you find the corresponding page number in other editions.
Sadly, as scholars know, there are three different paginations in the English editions, and now, even worse, there are two different paginations in the French.
Film by Morgane Blain & René Clerc (France)
In 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty published his dissertation Phenomenology of Perception. This year is particularly rich for the philosopher. We focus on the stages of the publication and reception of his thesis, from Paris to Lyon, where he takes up his post as lecturer in psychology. Using unpublished archival material, our research aims to shed light on the “Lyonnaise Period” and the way in which the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty is constituted within the intellectual circles of Lyon. The reconstruction of these intellectual constellations and of these receptions of his research sheds light on lesser-known aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s work.