This chapter contains section titled: From “An Unpublished Text” From “Cézanne's Doubt” From “Reflection and Interrogation”.

Embodied Care is the first work to argue for the body's centrality to care ethics, doing so by analyzing our corporeality at the phenomenological level.

I develop an interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of motor intentionality, one that emerges out of a reading of his presentation of a now classic case study in neuropathology—patient Johann Schneider—in Phenomenology of Perception. I begin with Merleau-Ponty's prescriptions for how we should use the pathological as a guide to the normal, a method I call triangulation. I then turn to his presentation of Schneider's unusual case. I argue that we should treat all of Schneider's behaviors as (...) pathological, not only his abstract movements, as is commonly acknowledged in the secondary literature, but also crucially his concrete movements. Using these facts of Schneider's illness, I reconstruct a ‘fundamental function’ of consciousness, as Merleau-Ponty called it, in which there are two kinds of bodily agency: the power of the body to be solicited by a situation and the power of the body to project a situation. I propose that these powers became dissociated in Schneider's case, as evidenced by his abstract and concrete movements, while in the normal case, these powers comprise a dynamic unity, enacted as motor intentionality. I also discuss how my interpretation complements Merleau-Ponty's assertion that motor intentions exist between mind and matter. (shrink)

This article proposes a new approach to employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy in the philosophy of religion. Rather than finding a latent theology in Merleau-Ponty – as some interpreters do – this article argues that Merleau-Ponty's later ontology can provide the basis for a philosophical anthropology which can help us understand why human beings are drawn to religion and how this is expressed in affective and ritual practice. This ontology can help us to understand the notion of (...) freedom as it applies to affective, embodied, and ritual religious practices and begins to sketch out how freedom might be understood in light of embodiment. (shrink)

Over the course of its history, feminist standpoint theory has encountered a number of problems which reveal divisions among its supporters over certain fundamental philosophical commitments. This chapter sketches a phenomenological account of perception that can begin to address these problems, drawn largely from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Merleau-Ponty can help us resolve these issues by providing an account of perspectival perception wherein a multiplicity of different perceptual standpoints all nonetheless put us in touch with a (...) single external world, and in which some standpoints may be better than others when it comes to accessing certain features of this world. For Merleau-Ponty, the proliferation of standpoints need not lead us into an unacceptably relativistic framework, as long as we are able to conceive of each of these standpoints as giving whoever occupies it access to some particular aspect of a singular, real, shared world. (shrink)

This article retraces the main instances at the root of Merleau-Ponty’s project of a « transcendental geology », a project announced in a working note of 1960. This project is linked to the complex intertwining of history and nature, which Merleau-Ponty thematizes as the two non-objectifiable dimensions that pose a challenge to reflexive thought. History and nature, both in their particular subjective manifestations as personal life or one’s own body, as well as in their broader sense as the (...) history of peoples or nature as a domain of the unbuilt, are characterized as unavoidable, as quasi-objects that are the soil of existence. It is in this direction that Merleau-Ponty’s interest in the “ultra-things” of Henri Wallon, those entities that the child can neither conceive nor imagine, seems to be heading. I propose that ultra-things are linked to inhabiting: they are the uninhabitable and the dimensions that cannot be renounced. This relationship with inhabiting restores the relational aspect of the problem of the unreflective in Merleau-Ponty and highlights the timeliness and urgency of the program of a transcendental geology as an ecology of thought and as an ecological philosophy. (shrink)

In this article I examine the relation between the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze by looking at the way in which they refer to Henri Bergson’s time theory. Although Merleau-Ponty develops some fundamental Bergsonian insights on the nature of time, he presents himself as a critical reader of the latter. I will show that although Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Bergson differs fundamentally from Deleuze’s interpretation, Merleau-Ponty’s “corrections” of Bergson’s theory fit Deleuze’s reading of Bergson (...) very well. This indicates a similarity with respect to what is at stake in the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. Hence the critical reference that Deleuze makes to Merleau-Ponty’s conception of cinema and thus of movement is not justified, but is the result of a selective and prototypical reading of the early Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

La linguistique saussurienne paraît avoir exercé, spécialement au cours des années 1951 à 1954, une influence assez considérable sur la pensée de Merleau-Ponty. Un travail de portée plus générale nous ayant amené à mesurer l'importance de la chose pour Pensemble de l'œuvre de ce philosophe, nous allons seulement essayer ici de prećiser un peu le rôle d'une telle influence en nous appuyant sur une analyse de l'interprétation de Saussure par Merleau-Ponty.Dans la Phénoménologie de la Perception, celui-ci avait déjà (...) consacré un chapitre à l'étude de la parole conçue comme gesticulation ou expression corporelle. Quand, en 1953–54, il abordera le Problème de la Parole, dans un cours au Collège de France, c'est à Saussure lui-même qu'il attribuera des vues assez voisines: “Le cours cherchait à illustrer et é étendre cette notion saussurienne de la parole comme fonction positive et conquérante. (shrink)

Fiel a sus términos, en la palabra «paisaje», Maurice Merleau-Ponty intentadescribir la disposición de elementos en los que se instala la reflexión sartriana,evitando atribuir a la continuidad o a la réplica los argumentos que discuteSartre en relación con la existencia. Difícilmente una palabra conseguiríaseñalar la diferencia que establece Sartre en su reflexión sobre la existencia,lo que exige integrarlo en la composición de un paisaje más amplio, próximoa otros dos pensadores: Søren Kierkegaard y Martin Heidegger; proximidadque no se encuentra, (...) ciertamente, exenta de contraste. Siendo aún posible lapregunta por la existencia, cada uno de los filósofos nombrados es apenasun referente que conducirá a la noción definitiva desarrollada por Merleau-Ponty, a saber: la «encarnación» del ser en el mundo. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is known and celebrated as a renowned phenomenologist and is considered a key figure in the existentialist movement. In this wide-ranging and penetrative study, Stephen Priest engages Merleau-Ponty across the full range of his philosophical thought. He considers Merleau-Ponty's writings on the problems of the body, perception, space, time, subjectivity, freedom, language, other minds, physical objects, art and being. Priest addresses Merleau-Ponty's thought in connection with Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. He uses clear (...) and direct language to explain the thoughts of and the ensuing importance of one of the greatest contemporary thinkers. Philosophy students and scholars alike will find great pleasure in this fascinating exploration of the writings and ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work is commonly associated with the philosophical movement called existentialism and its intention to begin with an analysis of the concrete experiences, perceptions, and difficulties, of human existence. However, he never propounded quite the same extreme accounts of radical freedom, being-towards-death, anguished responsibility, and conflicting relations with others, for which existentialism became both famous and notorious in the 1940s and 1950s. Perhaps because of this, he did not initially receive the same amount of attention as his (...) French contemporaries and friends, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. These days though, his phenomenological analyses are arguably being given more attention than either, in both France and in the Anglo-American context, because they retain an ongoing relevance in fields as diverse as cognitive science, medical ethics, ecology, sociology and psychology. Although it is difficult to summarize Merleau-Ponty’s work into neat propositions, we can say that he sought to develop a radical re-description of embodied experience (with a primacy given to studies of perception), and argued that these phenomena could not be suitably understood b y the philosophical tradition because of its tendency to drift between two flawed and equally unsatisfactory alternatives: empiricism and, what he called, intellectualism. This article will seek to explain his understanding of perception, bodily movement, habit, ambiguity, and relations with others, as they were expressed in his key early work, Phenomenology of Perception, before exploring the enigmatic ontology of the chiasm and the flesh that is so evocatively described in his unfinished book, The Visible and the Invisible. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty was a pivotal figure in twentieth century French philosophy. He was responsible for bringing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers - Husserl and Heidegger - to France and instigated a new wave of interest in this approach. His influence extended well beyond the boundaries of philosophy and can be seen in theories of politics, psychology, art and language. This is the first volume to bring together a comprehensive selection of Merleau-Ponty's writing. Sections from the following are (...) included: The Primacy of Perception The Structure of Behaviour The Phenomenology of Perception The Prose of the World The Visible and the Invisible Sense and Non-Sense The Adventures of the Dialectic In a substantial critical introduction Thomas Baldwin provides a critical discussion of the main themes of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, connecting it to subsequent philosophical debates and setting it in the context of the ideas of Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. Each text is also prefaced with an explanation which sets it in its context in Merleau-Ponty's work; and there are extensive suggestions for further reading to enable students to pursue the issues raised by Merleau-Ponty. Thus the book provides the ideal materials for students studying Merleau-Ponty for the first time. (shrink)

Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Kerry H. Whiteside presents the political theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, one of France's best-known twentieth-century philosophers. Whiteside argues that Merleau-Ponty's objective in his political writings was to make existentialism into the foundation for a philosophically consistent mode of political thinking. This study discusses the inadequacies Merleau-Ponty found in the traditional philosophies of empiricism and idealism, and then examines the subject-object dualism that he believed deprived previous forms of existentialism of political significance. (...) Whiteside shows how Merleau-Ponty overcame these problems by grounding political reasoning in a theory of consciousness that emphasized both its individuality and its need for socially created meaning. After explaining Merleau-Ponty's modifications of the views of Sartre, Aron, and others, the book investigates how he applied his political theory in editorial exchanges with Communists and liberals. Throughout this study, Whiteside traces and criticizes the changes in the philosopher's concept of Marxism and points to his many ideas that bear on current controversies in political theory. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Les textes de Merleau-Ponty qui traitent explicitement de la guerre sont tous écrits en 1945 ou postérieurs à cette date ; ils sont contemporains de l’engagement marxiste de l’auteur qui, avec Sartre, a fondé Les Temps modernes. La Phénoménologie de la perception, dont les premiers linéaments sont lisibles avant 1939 et qui paraît juste après la guerre, est écrite pendant l’occupation allemande ; il est intéressant de regarder si la guerre n’est pas présente dans ce livre et comment elle (...) l’est dans une philosophie de la sensibilité apparemment heureuse, tant qu’elle paraît servir de fondement et de cadre à une philosophie de l’histoire, mais aussi tragique quand l’histoire semble exiger une théorisation qui prend le pas sur la philosophie de la perception. Merleau-Ponty a-t-il réussi une synthèse? Ou ne reste-t-il de son ambition de traiter de l’histoire comme il traitait de la perception qu’une philosophie divisée, dont on peut suivre les clivages presque en chaque proposition et dont l’échec est déjà perçu par les contemporains du phénoménologue, marxiste ou non? Merleau-Ponty ’s texts dealing explicitly with war were all written in 1945 or a few years after : they are contemporary to the Marxist involvement of the author who founded Les Temps modernes with Sartre. The Phenomenology of perception, whose first outlines can be traced as far back as before 1939, and which is published immediately after the war, was written during the German occupation of France : it is interesting to wonder whether war is not yet present in this very book whereas it is already there in a philosophy, only apparently happy, since it seems to ground and frame a new philosophy of history, but it seems also quite tragic an approach when history seems to demand a theorization overstepping the philosophy of perception. Did Merleau-Ponty succeed in writing some kind of synthesis? Or does it only remain of his ambition to deal with history as if he were dealing with perception only a torn philosophy whose splits may be followed almost throught every proposition and whose failure is already perceived by the phenomenologist’s contemporaries, whether they be Marxists or not? (shrink)

The author argues that merleau-Ponty's conception of his task as a philosopher changed between "the structure of behavior" (1942) and "the phenomenology of perception" (1945) and that the latter is accordingly written in a nonscientific style susceptible of misinterpretation. Focusing first on the earlier work, He examines terminological confusions and logical difficulties in merleau-Ponty's critique of realism, And argues that the central concept of form is scientifically useless and philosophically unnecessary. He then discusses merleau-Ponty's later views on (...) language before considering his rejection of objectivism and formulating the significant philosophical issues raised by his work. (staff). (shrink)

Este texto intenta comprender la naturaleza de la reflexión radical que debe ser la filosofía y cómo es diferente de una reflexión intelectualista o cartesiana. Mientras que la última se concibe como todopoderosa, capaz de constituir el mundo por sí sola, la reflexión radical reconoce, por el contrario, lo que está más acá de ella, es decir, la enorme zona carnal que Merleau-Ponty caracteriza como “objetivo previo” o “irreflexivo”. Solo entendiendo la reflexión radical como libertad, invención y apropiación del (...) sentido, parece resolverse la contradicción entre intelectualismo y conciencia encarnada, ello para dilucidar la fuerza de la fenomenología donde parece mostrar su debilidad, es decir, precisamente en el trabajo de comprensión del mundo en relación con la conciencia. Para este propósito se explora la obra de Merleau-Ponty, particularmente la Fenomenología de la percepción, en función de un análisis inmanente de los conceptos de percepción y libertad propios de consideraciones fenomenológicas del filósofo francés. Como conclusión de este análisis se deriva la posibilidad de comprender que dada la tendencia de la reflexión radical a tratar de transgredir sus límites, esta podría convertirse en una reflexión intelectualista o idealista, mientras que la libertad podría convertirse en un bloqueo en la experiencia adquirida, ello exigiría, entonces, que tanto la reflexión radical como la libertad se relacionen de manera continua y moderada en el mundo de la percepción para poder configurar una experiencia cualificada y no empobrecida del mundo. (shrink)

Presents the basis of Merleau-Ponty's ontology, as presented in his book Phenomology of Perception, and shows how it can help provide humans with a foundation ...

PART INTRODUCTIONS TO MERLEAU- PONTY'S PHI LOSOPH Y OF PAI NTI NG Galen A. Johnson ...

Movies have a striking aesthetic power: they can draw us in and induce a peculiar mode of involvement in their images – they absorb us. While absorbed in a movie, we lose track both of the passage of time and of the fact that we are sitting in a dark room with other people watching the play of light upon a screen. What is the source of the power of movies? Noël Carroll, who cites Maurice Merleau-Ponty as an (...) influence on his account of the power of movies, agrees with Merleau-Ponty that our perceptual experience of movies draws on many of the capacities at work in our perceptual experience of everyday situations. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception shows that Carroll’s emphasis on intellectual inference and the entertaining of unasserted thoughts is a distortion of the phenomenology of cinematic absorption. According to Merleau-Ponty, such intellectual operations come into play in cases of breakdown but should not be read back into the primary absorbed experience as being implicitly operative all along. After presenting and criticizing Carroll’s view, I interpret and expand upon Merleau-Ponty’s position, showing that his version of the analogy between cinematic perception and everyday perception is more convincing than Carroll’s. (shrink)

This extension of the critique is intimately connected with the problems raised by Structure. Toward the end of that book it appeared that, since materialism is false, nature, considered as a system of physical objects connected causally, in some sense, exists only "for us." But it is immediately obvious that we use "for us" in an unfamiliar sense, when we say that. It is not being claimed that nature exists only for us in the sense in which, for instance, philosophers (...) have said that secondary qualities exist only for us. The problem which Structure raised was precisely what new sense we could possibly give to "for us" and its correlative "in itself" so that we could make sense of the result of that earlier argument. Objectivism, as it is being attacked by Merleau-Ponty says that "for us" and "in itself" are only to be used in the familiar senses in which we say that events and objects exist in nature in themselves, independently of any human awareness and are, as such, described by true statements in science. This is an ontological thesis, for something is being asserted about what it means to exist. The objectivist maintains that the only sense in which anything may be said to exist is that of existing whether anyone is aware of that or not. True statements about existence in nature are said, by the objectivist, to be independent of any statements about the mental states of human beings. This dogma is extended to human beings when they are made the object of scientific study. The mental states of human beings, let alone their physical states, are truly described if the statements about them are true independently of statements about any other mental states of the same subject except those which are either causally or logically connected to the mental states under discussion. Similarly, statements about persons are true or false independently of statements about the observer's mental states. Persons and bodies are regarded as impersonal series of events, as "processus en troisième personne". (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle and Maurice Merleau-Ponty each attempted to articulate a non-mechanistic concept of the body by stressing the importance of skill: skillful behavior constituting cognition in Ryle’s work, and the skill body constituting perception in Merleau-Ponty’s work. In this chapter, I turn to their cautions and insights. By drawing out the relation between these two seemingly unrelated theorists, I hope to show that together Ryle and Merleau-Ponty have much to offer philosophy today.

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology shows how the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from its very beginnings, seeks to find sense or meaning within nature, and how this quest calls for and develops into a radically new ontology. -/- David Morris first gives an illuminating analysis of sense, showing how it requires understanding nature as engendering new norms. He then presents innovative studies of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, revealing how these early works are oriented (...) by the problem of sense and already lead to difficulties about nature, temporality, and ontology that preoccupy Merleau-Ponty's later work. Morris shows how resolving these difficulties requires seeking sense through its appearance in nature, prior to experience—ultimately leading to radically new concepts of nature, time, and philosophy. -/- Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology makes key issues in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy clear and accessible to a broad audience while also advancing original philosophical conclusions. (shrink)

This article retraces the main instances at the root of Merleau-Ponty’s project of a « transcendental geology », a project announced in a working note of 1960. This project is linked to the complex intertwining of history and nature, which Merleau-Ponty thematizes as the two non-objectifiable dimensions that pose a challenge to reflexive thought. History and nature, both in their particular subjective manifestations as personal life or one’s own body, as well as in their broader sense as the (...) history of peoples or nature as a domain of the unbuilt, are characterized as unavoidable, as quasi-objects that are the soil of existence. It is in this direction that Merleau-Ponty’s interest in the “ultra-things” of Henri Wallon, those entities that the child can neither conceive nor imagine, seems to be heading. I propose that ultra-things are linked to inhabiting: they are the uninhabitable and the dimensions that cannot be renounced. This relationship with inhabiting restores the relational aspect of the problem of the unreflective in Merleau-Ponty and highlights the timeliness and urgency of the program of a transcendental geology as an ecology of thought and as an ecological philosophy. (shrink)

PhaenEx, Vol 1, No 1 (2006) Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Intertwining and Objectification Dorothea OlkowskiIn chapter four of The Visible and the Invisible, titled ``The Intertwining -- The Chiasm,'' Merleau-Ponty considers the relation between the body as sensible, which is to say ``objective,'' and the body as sentient, that is, as ``phenomenal'' body. He makes this inquiry in the context of interrogating the access of such a sensible-sentient or objective-phenomenal body to Being. ``Objectivity'' and the objective body, as (...) class='Hi'>Merleau-Ponty defines it in the Phenomenology of Perception, are to be determined in relation to experience. Objectivity requires knowing how it is possible for determinate shapes to be available for experience at all. But the possibility of determinate shapes is also called into question by Merleau-Ponty insofar as the body is experienced as a point of view on things; thus every body would experience a different point of view, even though things are given as abstract elements of one total world. Since the two elements form a system, an intertwining, in which each moment (that of a body with a particular point of view and that of things in the totality of their world) is immediately expressive of each other, objectivity would seem to be hard to achieve. The relationship between body and things, point of view and world, if the relata continually express one another, would appear to be anything but determinate and the question of how objectivity is possible remains unanswered. This essay will explore this question in the light of Merleau-Ponty's (mis-) reading of Henri Bergson and from the point of view of Sartre's original expression of the relation of intertwining. (shrink)

모리스 메를로-퐁티의 신체 주체론이 함축하고 있는 인격 개념은 새로운 윤리를 보여주고 있는 메를로-퐁티의 도덕적 주체의 진면목을 보다 분명하게 드러내 준다. 익명성의 층위를 내포하는 메를로-퐁티적인 인격은 절대적 자기동일성의 견고함 속에서 수련을 통한 인격적 고양으로 도덕성을 실현하는 그러한 인격이 아니다. 인격이 익명성의 층위를 내포한다는 것은 인격이라는 말 자체가 전제하고 있는 이분화 혹은 불일치를 내부로 흡수한다는 것이고, 이것은 인격이 타자와의 관계 속에서 형성되는 것임을 뜻한다. 이를테면 메를로-퐁티의 인격 개념은 인격의 원래 의미인 페르소나에 가깝다. 페르소나가 타자와의 관계에 따르는 것처럼 메를로-퐁티의 인격은 자기 자신과의 불일치를, (...) 즉 익명성을 내포하면서 타자와의 관계 속에서 만들어지는 것이다. 관계주의적 윤리학의 모습을 보여주고 있는 메를로-퐁티 윤리학은 오늘날 그 중요성이 더욱 강조되고 있는 공동체 정신 함양에 도움이 될 것이다. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an examination of the shared connections between the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the Austro-Hungarian movement theorist, Rudolf Laban.In many ways Merleau-Ponty''s philosophy demonstrates a synthesis of the best in existen-tialism and phenomenology. In like manner, Rudolf Laban was a synthesizer of experiences and theories of movement.

Je cherche ici à renouveler la compréhension de l’esthétique merleau-pontienne en lisant les notes de son premier cours au Collège de France, « Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression ». Ce faisant, on peut voir certains films de Godard comme prolongeant la réflexion du philosophe, éclairer le rapport de Deleuze à la phénoménologie et enfin resituer Merleau-Ponty dans le contexte des pratiques artistiques contemporaines. La portée de cette phénoménologie du mouvement dépasse cependant le cadre de l’esthétique (...) dans la mesure où elle laisse entrevoir une solution au problème du passage du perceptif au conceptuel. (shrink)

Against David Schenck's interpretation, I argue that it is not absolutely clear that Merleau-Ponty ever meant to replace what Schenck refers to as the "unity of meanings" interpretation of "structure" with a "material meanings" interpretation. A particular problem-setting -- for example, an attempt to understand the "truth in naturalism" or the "truth in dualism" -- may very well require a particular mode of expression. I argue that the mode of expression chosen by Merleau-Ponty for these purposes, while unfortunate (...) in some of its apparent implications, need not be interpreted as recommitting him to the doctrine he spent his life working to renounce. I have argued that this would have been clearer had he been able to avail himself of James J. Gibson's notion of affordances, which capture perfectly what he was reaching for. (shrink)

Winner of the 2014 Edward Goodwin Ballard Award for an Outstanding Book in Phenomenology, awarded by the Center for Advance Research in Phenomenology. -/- Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression offers a comprehensive reading of the philosophical work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a central figure in 20th-century continental philosophy. -/- By establishing that the paradoxical logic of expression is Merleau-Ponty's fundamental philosophical gesture, this book ties together his diverse work on perception, language, aesthetics, politics and history in (...) order to establish the ontological position he was developing at the time of his sudden death in 1961. Donald A. Landes explores the paradoxical logic of expression as it appears in both Merleau-Ponty’s explicit reflections on expression and his non-explicit uses of this logic in his philosophical reflection on other topics, and thus establishes a continuity and a trajectory of his thought that allows for his work to be placed into conversation with contemporary developments in continental philosophy. The book offers the reader a key to understanding Merleau-Ponty's subtle methodology and highlights the urgency and relevance of his research into the ontological significance of expression for today's work in art and cultural theory. (shrink)

Leading scholars explore the later thought of Merleau-Ponty and its central role in the modernism-postmodernism debate.