M. C. Dillon

M. C. Dillon (1938–2005) was widely regarded as a world-leading Merleau-Ponty scholar. His book Merleau-Ponty's Ontology (1988) is recognized as a classic text that revolutionized the philosophical conversation about the great French phenomenologist. Dillon followed that book with two others: Semiological Reductionism, a critique of early-1990s linguistic reductionism, and Beyond Romance, a richly developed theory of love. At the time of his death, Dillon had nearly completed two further books to which he was passionately committed. The first one offers a highly original interpretation of Nietzsche's ontology of becoming. The second offers a detailed ethical theory based on Merleau-Ponty's account of carnal intersubjectivity. The Ontology of Becoming and the Ethics of Particularity collects these two manuscripts written by a distinguished philosopher at the peak of his powers—manuscripts that, taken together, offer a distinctive and powerful view of human life and ethical relations.

Critiques the predominant romantic ideal.Beyond Romance critiques the romantic ideal that predominates contemporary thought and practice-it defines, explores, and advocates authentic love as a preferable alternative. The author claims that you can't genuinely love a person you don't know, and that the quality of love depends on the quality and extent of the knowing. Drawing heavily from the work of Merleau-Ponty, Dillon also takes up the classical treatments of love from Plato to the present, emphasizing Hegel, Freud, Sartre, and Derrida. Dillon argues that much of contemporary erotic malaise is traceable to the flaws in the romantic model, and that authentic love addresses these mistakes and promises relief.

Originally published by Indiana University Press in 1988, this is a revised second edition containing a new preface plus an additional chapter on ""Truth in Art"". Dillon's general thesis is that Merleau-Ponty has developed the first genuine alternative to ontological dualism seen in Western philosophy. From his early work on the philosophical significance of the human body to his later ontology of the flesh, Merleau-Ponty shows that the perennial problems growing out of dualistic conceptions of mind and body, subject and object, immanence and transcendence can be resolved within the framework of a new way of thinking based on the exemplar of the worldly embodiment of thought.

This critical interpretation shows Derridian thought to be permeated by a semiology that reduces all meaning to the signification of signs thus challenging the philosophy of deconstruction at its roots. This book interprets Derrida and looks beyond deconstructionism. It is a critique that identifies a pervasive flaw in Derrida's thinking: the semiological reduction that permeates deconstructionist theory and postmodernism in general. The critique focuses on Derrida, but its conclusions may be applied to other major figures in the postmodern tradition who espouse the variant of Saussurean semiology that reduces all meaning to the signification of signs. This book challenges the philosophy of deconstruction at its roots, and does so on the basis of a diligent reading of central texts and an understanding of the tradition of Continental philosophy providing the context for Derridian thought.