Marie-Eve Morin

Canadian philosopher (Professor of Philosophy, University of Alberta), comparative continental ontologist. Editorial Advisory Board of the New Perspectives in Ontology series (Edinburgh University Press). Editor of Continental Realism and Its Discontents (2017). Author of *Merleau-Ponty and Nancy on Sense and Being: At the Limits of Phenomenology* (2022). Distinctive contribution to the wiki: the encroachment-vs-unpassable-limit thesis on the MP/Nancy écart divergence + the desire for the One diagnostic of MP + the application of Shaviro/Cohen cautious anthropomorphism to MP's 1948 Causeries.

Key Points

  • Comparative method: brings MP and Nancy "as close to one another as possible" via uncanny resonances (despite lack of direct influence), in order to uncover the origin of their divergences.
  • Saint Aubert-mediated reading of MP: relies heavily on Le scénario cartésien (SC), Être et chair (EC), Du lien des êtres (LEEE), and Vers une ontologie indirecte (VOI) for MP's late-period diagnostics.
  • Speculative realism as guiding thread: uses Meillassoux's correlationism critique not to defeat or defend phenomenology but to re-read MP and Nancy under pressure of the limit-question.
  • Master thesis (Morin 2022, p. 23 + p. 192): "if not a posited unity, at least a desire for the One that has completely disappeared from Nancy's ontology" — diagnosed across MP's communion, Ineinander, encroachment, and the "spanned hiatus" at VI 148.
  • Distinctive interpretive moves: (a) MP's in-itself-for-us (PP 336) is a single category that undoes the Cartesian-Sartrian ontology on which Meillassoux's ancestrality problem depends; (b) MP's 1948 anthropomorphism is cautious anthropomorphism avant la lettre; (c) Nancy's quelconque is double-determinate (conceptual indeterminacy + material concretion), defending Nancy against Harman's overmining charge.

Connections

Open Questions

  • Has Morin's écart-as-encroachment-vs-limit thesis been taken up in the secondary literature on either MP or Nancy? As of 2026 it is the most precise statement of the MP/Nancy divergence on offer; its reception trajectory is worth tracking.
  • Is Morin a defender of phenomenology against SR, or a transformer of phenomenology via SR? The book frames SR as "guiding thread," but the whole architecture is a defence — does Morin understate her own position?

Sources