From the Dialogues: Philosophy in Comparative Perspective at McMaster University in April 2013. Michael Berman speaks on “Indirect Unity: Merleau-Ponty and Nagarjuna on the Human and Non-human”

The nature of the non-human assumes an understanding of the nature of the human, which we may claim, having our experience as from within this latter realm, but this leaves the operant term, nature, at a distance. This essay will investigate this problem through Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s musings on human being and nature, and will compare these with Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamikakarika (The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way), particularly drawing upon the experiential notion of pratitya-samutpada (relational origination). The comparative approach herein will explain some of their key ideas, ranging them against each other, counter-pointing similarities and differences, and then finally demonstrating that through their shared perspectives there exists, what Merleau-Ponty calls, an indirect unity between these philosophers.