In Introduction to a Phenomenology of Life, renowned French philosopher Renaud Barbaras aims to construct the basis for a phenomenology of life. Called an introduction because it has to deal with philosophical limits and presuppositions, it is much more, as Barbaras investigates life in its phenomenological senses, approached through the duality of its intransitive and transitive senses. Originally published in French (Introduction a une phenomenologie de la vie) Introduction to a Phenomenology of Life first defines the problem of life phenomenologically, then studies the failures of the phenomenological movement to adequately think about life, and finally elaborates a new, original, and productive approach to the problem. Combining original interpretations and expert readings of philosophers such as Heidegger, Henry, Bergson, and Merleau-Ponty, Barbaras offers a powerful and important contribution to phenomenology and continental thought.

Desire and Distance constitutes an important new departure in contemporary phenomenological thought, a rethinking and critique of basic philosophical positions concerning the concept of perception presented by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, though it departs in significant and original ways from their work. Barbaras's overall goal is to develop a philosophy of what "life" is-one that would do justice to the question of embodiment and its role in perception and the formation of the human subject. Barbaras posits that desire and distance inform the concept of "life." Levinas identified a similar structure in Descartes's notion of the infinite. For Barbaras, desire and distance are anchored not in meaning, but in a rethinking of the philosophy of biology and, in consequence, cosmology. Barbaras elaborates and extends the formal structure of desire and distance by drawing on motifs as yet unexplored in the French phenomenological tradition, especially the notions of "life" and the "life-world," which are prominent in the later Husserl but also appear in non-phenomenological thinkers such as Bergson. Barbaras then filters these notions (especially "life") through Merleau-Ponty.

In this book, Emmanuel Alloa offers a handrail for venturing into the complexities of the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61). Through a comprehensive analysis of the three main phases of Merleau-Ponty's thinking and a thorough knowledge of his many unpublished manuscripts, the author traces how Merleau-Ponty's philosophy evolved and exposes the remarkable coherence that structures it from within. Alloa teases out the continuity of a motive that traverses the entire oeuvre as a common thread. Merleau-Ponty struggled incessantly against any kind of ideology of transparency, whether of the world, of the self, of knowledge, or of the self's relation to others. Already translated into several languages, Alloa's innovative reading of this crucially important thinker shows why the issues Merleau-Ponty raised are, more than ever, those of our time.

The notion of "flesh", such as Merlau-Ponty elaborates it, is beginnig to occupy a central position in international philosophical debates. In recent years, some of the most famous contemporary thinkers have struggled with it. They were brought to the flesh by its intrinsic interest as well as by the contemporary reconception of our experience of the body and its relation to the world. The dense and original articles in which this volume consist attempt to return to the strictly philosophical coherence of the notion, as well to the tightly woven network of references to the flesh within Merlau-Ponty's thought, where it retains the eminent place that we know it possesses. In addition, with this fourth volume, Chiasmi International expands its field of investigation by devoting a special section to the thought of the great Czech phenomenologist Jan Patocka. Essays by Mauro Carbone, Renaud Barbaras, Pierre Rodrigo, Etienne Bimbenet, Luigi Tarantino, Leonard Lawlor, Jean-Noel Cueille, Claudio di Bitonto, Kym Maclaren, Fabrice Colonna, Alessia Mascellani, Valentina Flak, David Belot, Antonio Martone, Guy Deniau, Bruce Begout, Pierre Cassou-Nogues, Justin Tauber.

Brought together here are most of the presentations made at the Merleau-Ponty seminars which were held at the Husserl Archives, Paris, in 1998-99 and 1999-2000. Some of the essays in English come from the Twenty-second Annual International Meeting of the Merleau-Ponty Circle which was held at Seattle University from the 18th to the 20th of September, 1997. And finally, there are a certain number of important Italian contributions, among which is the "Introduction" that Enzo Paci - one of the great figures in Italian phenomenology - wrote in 1958 for the translation of In Praise of Philosophy. This collection allows us to understand better the genesis of Merleau-Ponty's ontology and, in particular, the importance of his reflections on Nature. Texts by: Renaud Barbaras, Etienne Bimbenet, Patrick Burke, Philippe Cabestan, Mauro Carbone, Pierre Cassou-Nogues, Jean-Noel Cueille, Francesco Colli, Francoise Dastur, Pascal Dupond, Fred Evans, Paolo Gambazzi, Nicoletta Grillo, Galen A. Johnson, Samuel J. Julian, Antje Kapust, Leonard Lawlor, Glen Mazis, Dorothea Olkowski, Guido D. Neri, Enzo Paci, Alessandro Prandoni, Franck Robert, Michael Sanders, Jenny Slatman, Ted Toadvine, Robert Vallier, Amedeo Vigorelli, Agata Zielinski.

In Introduction to a Phenomenology of Life, renowned French philosopher Renaud Barbaras aims to construct the basis for a phenomenology of life. Called an introduction because it has to deal with philosophical limits and presuppositions, it is much more, as Barbaras investigates life in its phenomenological senses, approached through the duality of its intransitive and transitive senses. Originally published in French (Introduction a une phenomenologie de la vie) Introduction to a Phenomenology of Life first defines the problem of life phenomenologically, then studies the failures of the phenomenological movement to adequately think about life, and finally elaborates a new, original, and productive approach to the problem. Combining original interpretations and expert readings of philosophers such as Heidegger, Henry, Bergson, and Merleau-Ponty, Barbaras offers a powerful and important contribution to phenomenology and continental thought.

Generative Worlds. New Phenomenological Perspectives on Space and Time accounts for the phenomenological concept of generativity. In doing so, this book brings together several recent phenomenological studies on space and time. Generative studies in phenomenology propose new ways of conceiving space, time, and the relation between them. Edited by Luz Ascarate and Quentin Gailhac, the collection reveals new dimensions to topics such as the generation of life, birth, historicity, intersubjectivity, narrativity, institution, touching, and places, and in some cases, the contributors invert the classical definitions of space and time. These transformative readings are fruitful for the interdisciplinary exchange between philosophy and fields such as cosmology, psychology, and the social sciences. The contributors ask if phenomenology reaches its own concreteness through the study of generation and whether it manages to redefine certain dimensions of space and time which, in other orientations of the Husserlian method, remain too abstract and detached from the constitutive becoming of experience.

In this book, Emmanuel Alloa offers a handrail for venturing into the complexities of the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61). Through a comprehensive analysis of the three main phases of Merleau-Ponty's thinking and a thorough knowledge of his many unpublished manuscripts, the author traces how Merleau-Ponty's philosophy evolved and exposes the remarkable coherence that structures it from within. Alloa teases out the continuity of a motive that traverses the entire oeuvre as a common thread. Merleau-Ponty struggled incessantly against any kind of ideology of transparency, whether of the world, of the self, of knowledge, or of the self's relation to others. Already translated into several languages, Alloa's innovative reading of this crucially important thinker shows why the issues Merleau-Ponty raised are, more than ever, those of our time.

Chiasmi International publishes for the first time two previously unpublished working notes from Merleau-Ponty that date from 1959 and the first chapter of a previously unpublished text that Simondon had written some years earlier: texts that testify to the intersecting reflections that Merleau-Ponty and Simondon were conducting on one of the most decisive themes for the philosophy of the 20th Century: individuation. Some authors, who are among the best known specialists in the question of individuation, make their contributions bear on the subject matter of these texts, and on the relations between the thought of Merleau-Ponty and that of Simondon. The theme of the second section is the topic of life, which runs across Merleau-Ponty's lectures on nature, and shows itself to be perfectly complementary of that of the first one. The contributions devoted to the second theme essentially come from the Merleau-Ponty Circle (University of Western Ontario, 2003). Texts by: Giuliano Antonello, Daniela Calabro, Mauro Carbone, Fabrice Colonna, Miguel De Beistegui, Emmanuel De Saint Aubert, Helen A. Fielding, Paolo Gambazzi, Jacques Garelli, Xavier Guchet, Mariana Larison, Leonard Lawlor, Kym Maclaren, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, David Morris, Mario Neve, Felix O Murchadha, Franck Robert, Davide Scarso, Gilbert Simondon, Jenny Slatman, Ted Toadvine, Robert Vallier, Veniero Venier.

The title of the third volume of Chiasmi International deliberately reverses the tutle of one of Merleau-Ponty's last courses. Moreover, two unpublished notes concerning music make up the unusual opening of this volume. In these two ways, we are intending to emphasize that more than ever we must pay attention to Merleau-Ponty's particular tendency to seek the reason of (his) philosophy in non-philosophy. This attention is exactly what serves as the guiding thread throughout the ssays collected here, some of which have been solicited from the partecipants of the fourth "International Symposium of Phenomenology" (Perugia, 2000) while others were presented in the third seminar on Merleau-Ponty at the Husserl Archives in Paris (2000-2001). Texts by: Daniela Calabro, Mauro Carbone, Fabio Ciaramelli, Francesco Colli, Duane H. Davis, Wayne Froman, Michael Gendre, Xavier Guchet, Alexandre Hubeny, Kurt Dauer Keller, Enrica Lisciani-Petrini, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ann V. Murphy, Andrea Pinotti, Mario Todoro Ramirez Cobian, Myriam Revault D'Allones, Calvin O. Schrag, Clara da Silva-Charrak, Davide Scarso, Cecilia Sjoholm, Jenny Slatman, Ted Toadvine, Robert Vallier.

English summary: The universal a priori of the correlation between the transcendent being and its modes of subjective data draw minimal part of any approach that claims authorship on phenomenology. This is to show that a rigorous analysis of the correlation deploys itself necessarily on three levels and that phenomenology is thus destined to transcend itself into a cosmology and metaphysics. A first level of analysis, mainly phenomenological, establishes that the pure transcendence of the world is given to a subject whose mode of existence is a movement that we characterize as desire. However, the correlation also presupposes a common, bipolar mode of being, the foundation of the belonging of the subject to the world. As far as the subject is moving, the world to which it belongs must itself be understood as a procedural reality our movement proceeds from the archimovement the world; the dynamic phenomenology refers to a phenomenological dynamic which stands for cosmology. French description: L'a priori universel de la correlation entre l'etant transcendant et ses modes de donnee subjectifs dessine le cadre minimal de toute demarche qui se revendique de la phenomenologie. Il s'agit ici de montrer qu'une analyse rigoureuse de la correlation se deploie necessairement a trois niveaux et que la phenomenologie est ainsi vouee a se depasser elle-meme vers une cosmologie et une metaphysique. Un premier niveau d'analyse, proprement phenomenologique, permet d'etablir que la transcendance pure du monde se donne a un sujet dont le mode d'exister est un certain mouvement, que nous caracterisons comme desir. Cependant, la correlation presuppose egalement un mode d'etre commun aux deux poles, fondement de l'appartenance du sujet au monde. Pour autant que le sujet est mouvement, le monde auquel il appartient doit lui-meme etre compris comme une realite processuelle: notre mouvement procede de l'archimouvement du monde; la phenomenologie dynamique renvoie a une dynamique phenomenologique qui est synonyme d'une cosmologie. Des lors, la difference du sujet, sans laquelle il n'y a pas de correlation, ne peut que correspondre a une scission, plus originaire encore, qui affecte le proces meme de la manifestation sans neanmoins en proceder. Cette scission au coeur de l'archi-mouvement doit etre comprise comme un archi-evenement: celui-ci fait l'objet d'une metaphysique en un sens tres singulier, qui recueille l'ultime condition de possibilite de la phenomenologie elle-meme.