195 Husserl Studies 17: 195–205, 2001. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Phenomenological Method in Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Gurwitsch TED TOADVINE Social Sciences Department, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS 66801-5087, USA For more than a decade, the central concern of American Merleau-Ponty schol- arship has been his role as progenitor of the various strands of post-structur- alism and “post-modernism” dominating the landscape of continental studies in America. 1 The recent revival of interest in “classical” phenomenology, 2 both in Europe and the United States, has shifted the focus of research toward a closer examination of Merleau-Ponty’s own phenomenological paternity. Whereas the former investigations focused almost exclusively on interpret- ing The Visible and the Invisible as a forerunner of contemporary alternatives to or critiques of phenomenology, downplaying Merleau-Ponty’s commitment to phenomenological methods and influences, the time has come to reverse this issue: What, if anything, justifies our continuing to speak of Merleau-Ponty as a philosopher in the “phenomenological” tradition? To what degree can Merleau-Ponty be said to “break” with phenomenology, and what is the basis for his “turn”? And finally, how do his criticisms of phenomenology grow out of his own commitment to this philosophical approach? Admittedly, questions of this breadth accept no easy answers. But the re- cently published reading notes on Aron Gurwitsch’s The Field of Conscious- ness provide important clues for understanding Merleau-Ponty’s methodological self-examination during the writing of The Visible and the Invisible. 3 Merleau- Ponty’s notes, written in 1959 and 1960, mark a turning point in his theoreti- cal orientation, a change of direction inspired, at least in part, by his reading of Gurwitsch. The French editor of Merleau-Ponty’s notes considers Gurwitsch’s text to be “a critical catalyst and an important step in Merleau-Ponty’s search for an indirect ontology” (322/174), as it played the double role of forcing Merleau-Ponty to face the insurmountable difficulties of his earlier position while pushing him to more carefully develop the methodology underlying the extant sections of The Visible and the Invisible. Gurwitsch’s influence on the younger Merleau-Ponty has been widely known. But this newly published text suggests that Gurwitsch’s influence on Merleau-Ponty did not stop with his introduction of the latter to the convergence of phenomenology and Gestalt theory. It may be that the dialogue with Gurwitsch is as crucial for understand-