Ma recherche vise à expliquer des phénomènes moraux extrêmes tels que l'héroïsme spontané, la violence, et les sources courantes de stress post-traumatique afin d'en tirer un apport phénoménologique et philosophique en plus de comprendre en quoi ces expériences peuvent nous informer sur la nature humaine. Je m'appuie sur la phénoménologie et, plus particulièrement, sur les travaux d'Husserl et de Merleau-Ponty, auteurs sur lesquels je me suis spécialisé depuis ma maîtrise. Je m'intéresse entre autres à leurs travaux sur la perception spontannée ainsi que sur les jugements pré-perceptuels (préjudicatifs) afin d'examiner la possibilité d'avoir des jugements moraux pré-perceptuels et de voir comment ces jugements existent dans les phénomènes mentionnés plus haut et quels rapports ils peuvent avoir avec la notion de valeur morale. Mon travail s'inscrit dans une récente lignée de publications en phénoménologie critique sur le phénomène de l'orientation morale et sur la perception morale.

My thesis aims to retrace and analyze the development of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s moral philosophy throughout his career. My goal is to demonstrate the hidden and remarkable relevance of his work in contemporary ethics as well as to improve our knowledge of his moral philosophy specifically, which is currently lacking. Although he remains perceived as the philosopher of sense perception par excellence, I want to argue, contrarily to some other interpreters, that there is in fact a serious ethical dimension to his work and that his seemingly lack of interest for ethics is based on a misunderstanding in the literature. In my view, these two sides of his work are intrinsically connected: his work on perception provides the basis for his moral philosophy and this connection is what allowed him to write on politics, moral values and human freedom. I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s writings on morality provide many original contributions to contemporary ethics which remain underexplored, especially with regards to themes of moral responsibility, the opposition between freedom and political regimes, heroism, and moral meaning. What makes his contributions original, I believe, is the way in which Merleau-Ponty draws a link between sensorial experience and moral experience. On my interpretation, Merleau-Ponty’s interest for ethics is mainly guided by his concern about the nature of moral values, which are foward-looking and perceptual according to him, thus giving rise to experiences of moral perception. By combing through all his writings, including his lectures notes, drafts, unpublished works and war journal, as well as the secondary literature in French and English, I explain that morality, according to him, depends first and foremost on a perceptual experience in which perception plays the role of capturing moral and social norms insofar as perception is conditioned by the level of freedom that one possesses in order to perceive. Although his moral and political philosophy cannot be reduced to this, my thesis demonstrates that we must begin from this premise in order to understand the evolution of his thought on the various ethical issues that appear in his work.