Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy
December 2, 2022
Hayden Kee
6 citations
Merleau-Ponty and contemporary enactivists disagree about whether phenomenological descriptions apply to all organisms or only to sentient animals with sensorimotor systems. Merleau-Ponty limited phenomenology to sentient animals, while some enactivists extend it to all organisms, causing confusion about phenomenology's role. Merleau-Ponty also stressed a sharper divide between animal life and the human order than many enactivists do. Recent developmental and comparative psychology partly support his view, but he overstates the difference between human and animal cognition. A modified Merleau-Pontian account, tracing how children enter the human order in early life, better balances continuity and discontinuity.
Continental Philosophy Review
May 12, 2026
Hayden Kee
The concept of an 'institution of nature,' hinted at but not fully developed in Merleau-Ponty's lectures, is elaborated as a model for temporality within consciousness, culture, and embodiment. Unlike sedimentation, institution is protean and malleable. Merleau-Ponty's naturalized alternative contrasts with Descartes's divine institution of nature: nature self-institutes through the autoproduction of sense over deep evolutionary time. The human body exemplifies this, as a primordial institution whose intercorporeality—anatomical, sensory, and affective—grounds higher modes of intersubjectivity, culture, and language. The paper advocates for an expanded 'generative phenomenology' that incorporates evolutionary biology, suggesting that foundations of human experience are rooted in natural institutions laid down through evolution, bridging phenomenology and life sciences.
Philosophy East & West
March 25, 2021
Hayden Kee
The essay argues that yogic mantra meditation and phenomenology each offer insights that can enrich the other's understanding of language. Mantra meditators' experiences of sound and repetition reveal formative, pre-linguistic processes that shape linguistic meaning, which phenomenologists have largely overlooked. Conversely, phenomenology's analysis of intentionality and meaning provides a fresh perspective on the debate among mantra researchers about whether mantras are linguistic. The author suggests that mantras operate in a space between language and non-language, and that combining these two traditions can deepen our grasp of how meaning arises from embodied, meditative practice.