Ricardo Mendoza-Canales

Spanish-Peruvian phenomenologist working at Villanova University; editor of *Merleau-Ponty: Institution-Ontology-Politics* (Brill, 2026). Mendoza-Canales' chapter 4 — "The Adventures of Experience: Merleau-Ponty on Genesis and Institution" — is the volume's programmatic hinge: it argues that the 1954–55 institution course must be read as a direct continuation of the 1953–54 history course, that MP's institution-concept enacts a paradigm shift from Husserlian Stiftung (which Mendoza-Canales coins as Stiftung-Foundation → Stiftung-Becoming), and that institution opens a utopian horizon best read alongside Bloch's Überschreiten.

Key Points

  • Editor of *Merleau-Ponty: Institution-Ontology-Politics* (Brill 2026), volume 30 of "Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology."
  • Chapter 4 author: "The Adventures of Experience: Merleau-Ponty on Genesis and Institution."
  • Distinctive theses: (i) the 1954–55 institution course is a direct continuation of the 1953–54 history course; (ii) MP transforms Husserl's Stiftung from Stiftung-Foundation into Stiftung-Becoming; (iii) institution must be sharply distinguished from event (the event is a "fall" / cadere, institution is "emergence" / ontogenesis); (iv) the present becomes momentum (vs Husserlian Augenblick); (v) personal and public history relate via spiral, not concentric, structure; (vi) institution's political payoff is a non-blueprint utopian horizon structurally parallel to Bloch's Überschreiten.
  • Works extensively on the relation between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty in genetic phenomenology and philosophy of history.

Connections