Naturalism and transcendentalism

The ubiquity of idealism

Jeanne-Marie Roux

pp. 197-213

in: Michela Summa, Pietro Giuffrida (eds), Naturalism and subjectivity, Metodo 1 (2), 2013.

Abstract

If one disputes the ontological content of the naturalism that is involved in the naturalization of the mind, it seems that, inasmuch as naturalism corresponds to some methodological claims, it goes with a certain idea of what reality is, that is ‘objectivism’. The purpose of this paper is to examine the criticisms that phenomenology expresses towards ‘objectivism’, and hence towards naturalism, and the way phenomenologists (and Merleau-Ponty in particular) fall or try to avoid falling into traps similar to it. Here the traps of ‘idealism’ in its various forms are in a sense deeper than the traps of naturalism. We would like to suggest that there exists some idealist solidarity between naturalism and transcendentalism and that therefore any real philosophical criticism of naturalism that undermines its ontological reductionism, whether it is phenomenological or not, should renounce any form of transcendentalism.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice