AN EXAMINATION OF THE NOTION OF FUNDAMENTALITY WITH A DEVELOPED APPLICATION TO PHENOMENOLOGY

Abstract

In this paper I examine various notions and contexts of fundamentality. This exploration of fundamentality is intended to map out some of its more unfamiliar notions and observe how our understanding of what is fundamental shifts in different contexts. In the first chapter, the contexts I examine fundamentality in include the metaphysical context and conceptual context, from which I map out the different notions of fundamentality that appear in each context. In the second chapter, these contexts and notions are explored through the works of various philosophers beginning with analytical philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Theodore Sider, and ending with non-analytic philosophers, particularly the French philosophers Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The third chapter utilizes the understanding of how the notions and contexts of fundamentality shift throughout different philosophical works to apply it to Merleau-ponty’s phenomenological worldview, mainly working off the philosophy from his book Phenomenology Of Perception. This chapter concludes with mapping out a novel notion of fundamentality that allows us to understand and posit what is fundamental within the context of phenomenology that Merleau-Ponty presents, granting a novel understanding to how fundamentality works with his worldview.