Merleau-Ponty e a bola de neve: elogio e crítica de Bergson

This paper examines some approaches and differences of the Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy in relation to that of Bergson, once that Merleau-Ponty seems to be divided about the bergsonian conception of time in his thinking. This oscillation between criticism and compliment is certainly visible in the Phenomenology of perception, in which Merleau-Ponty recognizes that Bergson would have dissolved the question of the dualism when affirming that “the body and the spirit communicates by mediation of the time”. However, Merleau-Ponty denounces another kind of bergsonian dualism, that intends to find the unit in the multiplicity by means of the concept of “fusing multiplicity”. In this sense, the bergsonian metaphor of the “snow ball” looks for to characterize the essence of the time as duration.