Call for Papers: Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work may be understood either as continuing Husserl’s imperative to ‘return to the things themselves’, or as advancing the phenomenological movement to the pinnacle of its most radical expression. In either case, Merleau-Ponty represents one of the key philosophers of the 20th century and his magnum opus, Phenomenology of Perception, remains a revolutionary work of existential phenomenology.

 

To this end the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenmenology aims to publish a special issue with the purpose of promoting the reinvigoration and sustained interest in the work of Merleau-Ponty, and to develop scholarship that describes a state of ‘wonder’ in the face of the world (PP xiv–xv).

 

Merleau-Ponty suggests that “the theory of the body is already a theory of perception”; that perception is found in one’s primordial engagement with a world grounded in contingent and temporal corporeal experience (PP 235). He describes how (1) perception is the individual’s entire bodily inhabiting of its environment (relating closely to contemporary theories of 4E cognition); that (2) perception is perspectival and finite from the body (PP 81); that (3) through perception the individual is absorbed within and directed towards objects within the world, and ‘forgets’ the essence of consciousness in perception (PP 67, VI 213); and that (4) perceptual experience of the world extends to the perspectival structure of all human experience and understanding (in The Visible and the Invisible) (Carman, 2008: 1–3). 

 

Topics of discussion submitted to this special issue could include (but are not limited to) the following:

Contributors should submit their papers by 31 July 2025, with expected publication of papers towards the end of 2025.

 

Guidelines for authors can be viewed here. Submit manuscripts to online IPJP editorial system and To thsend a copy to Jean du Toit (editor of special issue) - jdutoit@ufh.ac.za