| Can ethical principles be derived from operating principles immanent to life and sense experience? Both Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze aspire to such a derivation. I articulate Merleau-Ponty's conception of life and of ethics around the notion of an a priori of the organism. Deleuze's reservations towards Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology hinge on the applicability of elements of his critique of Kant to Merleau-Ponty's work, and highlighting Merleau-Ponty's reworking of the Kantian notion of the a priori both steadies Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology against certain aspects of this critique and highlights the appropriateness of others. Any ethical theory that takes its principles from life must be able to distinguish those principles acquired in the course of our personal and subjective experience from transcendental and intersubjective principles in order to have an evaluative function, and one of Deleuze's most pertinent objections to Merleau Ponty's phenomenology is that, like Kant's work, it lacks the means of differentiating the two.;Keywords: Transcendental Philosophy, Empiricism, Phenomenology, Sensation, Passive Synthesis, Life, Organism, Faculties, Body, Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, Kant, Ethics, Aesthetics, Intensity. |
