Realism or Idealism?On Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy from A Viewpoint of Problematics of Correlation
Merleau-Ponty always tried to go beyond the debates between realism and idealism.His early philosophy generally explores the existential relationship between man and the world in the name of phenomenology of perception,and its systematic description of the framework of perception and the perceived world from different perspectives around the important concepts such as one's own body and bodily subject has a strong color of correlationalism.As a strong correlationalist,Merleau-Ponty's solu-tion of the problem of identity of thinking and being in his early philosophy is different from that of the dogmatic/naïve realists and the weak correlationalists in early modem philosophy,from that of the spec-ulative idealists in the process of transformation from early modern philosophy to late modern philoso-phy,and from other strong correlationalists in late modem philosophy and very strong correlationalists in contemporary philosophy.