| Author Quoted | Maurice Merleau-Ponty |
| Title Quoted | Sens et non-sens |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1960/01/01 |
| Imprint | Paris : Nagel. [1963, c1948] |
| Quotation | From Merleau-Ponty on Pseudo-scientific Marxism (Sens et non-sens, p. 223). Most intelligent papers I have yet read on Marxism and religion (225-26) - and the most challenging. Religion a symbolic structure, not mere meaningless verbalism, symbolizing relations between men, communion which it "cannot attain" - and which the revolution can attain. This is the thesis that has to be judged and which is judged by history itself. Existential movement of history - not "scientific" laws or operations but the movement of alienated man "to take possession of himself and of the world." Quotes Marx as saying - one must above all avoid setting up society again as abstraction "face to face with the individual." Moving force of history "l'homme engag" - moteur de la dialectique. ["The engaged man - engine of the dialectic."] |
| Quotation Source | A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, 1952-1960.; Edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 365 |
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| Link to Merton's Copy |
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