Evidence and Structure

Abstract

The concepts of evidence and structure are discussed from within a phenomenologically inspired epistemology, and are situated against two metaphysical backgrounds, a metaphysics of presence versus a metaphysics of nonpresence or absence. In this critique and based on the work by Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl's theory of knowledge is interpreted as relying upon a metaphysics of presence, in which the play of structure is (ideally) stabilized by a source point of evidence. Next, it is investigated whether a metaphysics of absence can be relevantly interpreted and actualized from within Merleau-Ponty's account, as developed in his The Structure of Behavior (1942).