If, as we saw in the last blog, it is rather hazardous to talk of “the personalist paradigm”, this is even more the case with the term “the phenomenological paradigm”. There are two main reasons for this: first, because there is much discussion about what actually constitutes phenomenology; second, because however we understand it, phenomenology operates not with one but with a range of paradigms (the Dasein of Heidegger is a long way from l’autre of Levinas!). Still, if we take a paradigm to be “a comprehensive, prescriptive model for collective living” it is possible to find examples of authors who apply a phenomenological paradigm to the human person as a relational being. One outstanding example of this approach can be found in the thought of Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) when he reflects on what he calls intersubjectivity…[READ MORE]
