Una conversazione tra filosofia e letteratura attraverso la parola di Maurice Merleau-Ponty e quella di Paul Valéry

This essay will discuss some of the main aspects that characterize the relationship between philosophy and literature according to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The main purpose is to present and examine the fertile dialogue that the philosophical work of Merleau-Ponty entertains with the poet and writer Paul Valéry. By positing two paradigmatic attitudes, the attitude classique and the attitude moderne, Merleau-Ponty develops two divergent typologies of subjectivity: the first one is grounded on the dualistic Cartesian philosophical tradition, while the second flourishes in the complex context of Europe during the 20th Century. Therefore, instead of a subjectivity which classifies and analyzes the world from a detached and privileged point of view, the modern subject is to be considered as in the world, and in relation to objects, which are neither passive, nor mere collections of properties. Thus, by investigating what such a modernity implicates for literary language, this contribution explores the grounds on which Valéry is chosen by Merleau-Ponty as an emblematic example of the attitude moderne.