Marilena Chauí

Brazilian philosopher (USP — University of São Paulo); a major Lusophone interpreter of Merleau-Ponty's politics. Her 2009 USP course manuscript Merleau-Ponty e a política — unpublished, preserved in tapescript form with original pagination — is the interpretive backbone of Larison's chapter 11 in *Merleau-Ponty: Institution-Ontology-Politics* (2026). Chauí's distinctive thesis: MP's political writings enact an "unprecedented theoretical revolution" by inverting Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics VI ranking of theory over praxis. Theory henceforth points to the possible; only praxis is the place where a possible attains apodicticity. Praxis is the passage from contingent to necessary — therefore "politics is existence on the plane of history."

Key Points

  • USP (University of São Paulo); major figure in Brazilian Lusophone reception of MP.
  • 2009 USP course manuscript Merleau-Ponty e a política is the primary source for her institution-of-MP-politics reading. The manuscript is unpublished but circulates in tapescript form with original pagination preserved.
  • Distinctive interpretive theses (per Larison ch. 11):
    • Aristotle-inversion thesis: MP enacts an "unprecedented philosophical revolution" by inverting NE VI's theory/praxis ranking. Since Aristotle, theory has been linked to the necessary, praxis to the contingent/prudential. MP inverts: theory now points to the possible; praxis institutes the necessary. "Politics is existence on the plane of history."
    • Three-moment continuity: the inversion is not isolated to PhP but recurs across MP's corpus in three identifiable moments — the Freud/Marx footnote in PhP III ("Le corps comme être sexué", on overdetermination of sense), the 1949 "Note sur Machiavel" (in Signes), and the Lukács passages of Aventures de la dialectique (1955).
    • Praxis as polarized existence: "consciousness is neither a knowledge nor a state of mind, but a social practice. Praxis is less than subject and more than object insofar as it is a polarized existence, a possibility that appears in the proletarian situation – praxis is the objective possibility" (Chauí 2009 p. 158).
    • Conscious initiative decides necessity-and-contingency: "with Lukács, the relationship between necessity and contingency becomes unprecedented, for it is the conscious initiative of men that decides what is necessary and what is contingent in history" (Chauí 2009 p. 158).
  • Underrepresented in Anglophone scholarship until Larison's chapter 11 in MIOP 2026.

Connections

Open Questions

  • The 2009 USP manuscript is unpublished. The wiki should not depend on it as a primary source for live or supported claims without cross-source verification (Chauí's published work — Experiência do pensamento, Obra de arte e filosofia — would need consultation).
  • The English-language Chauí corpus is thin; deeper engagement requires Portuguese.