Abstract

With the war in Ukraine, the relationship between reason and violence returns to the centre of the world debate. Who will triumph between the two? This is not the first time that humanity faces this dilemma. From this point of view, the querelles that swept through Europe at the beginning of the Cold War and the nuclear threat, involving the major philosophers of the time, return to the present day and can still offer some points for discussion. This essay will examine precisely the considerations around the reason/violence nexus that was elaborated by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Georges Bataille. Very few texts attempt to construct a dialogue between the two authors. In fact today, thanks to the publication of many minor and unpublished writings, we are able to see that their exchanges were quite significant. We will therefore try firstly to provide ample documentation of their exchanges, the explicit and implicit ones, and secondly to proceed to a dialogue between the two, around themes such as socialism, humanism, existentialism, dialectic: themes that, as elaborated by the two authors, offer interesting insights for today.