Ontology and Alterity in Merleau Ponty

In this work, leading Merleau-Ponty scholars state and interpret the philosopher's later ontology of flesh and reversibility, some defending and some challenging its accommodation of alterity and difference. Claude Lefort's seminal lecture criticizing Merleau-Ponty's treatment of otherness in The Visible and the Invisible and two previously untranslated essays by Emmanual Levinas shape this dialogue on reversibility, reciprocity, symmetry, and asymmetry in self-other relationships extending across ethics, politics, epistemology, and child development. The contributors respond to Lefort's and Levinas's critiques and expand the discussion to Merleau-Ponty's other works and his relation to Derrida and Hegel.