Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the _body_ to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's (...) insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

What makes this work so important is that it returned the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato.

First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental _Phénoménologie de la perception _signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers. _Phenomenology of Perception _stands in the great phenomenological tradition of Husserl, (...) Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course between the reductionism of science on the one hand and "intellectualism" on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures one’s situation and experience within the world. Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome, synaesthesia, and hallucination. This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations. Also included is a new foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to Merleau-Ponty_ _by Claude Lefort. Translated by Donald A. Landes. (shrink)

House. From cellar to garret. Significance of the hut -- House and universe -- Drawers, chests and wardrobes -- Nests -- Shells -- Corners -- Miniature -- Intimate immensity -- Dialectics of outside and inside -- Phenomenology of roundness.

Merleau-Ponty developed a phenomenology of the body that promoted a non-dualistic account of human existence. In this paper I intend to develop Merleau-Ponty's analysis further by questioning his account of the body on the issues of body perception, and the body's relation to its environment. To clarify these issues I draw from both the phenomenological tradition and recent psychological investigations.

Offers a philosophical exploration of the pervasiveness of place. Presenting an account of the role of place in human experience, this book points to place's indispensability in navigation and orientation. The role of the lived body in matters of place isconsidered, and the characteristics of built places are explored.

Both critique and an appropriation of a large and diverse body of work, Home and Beyond is a major contribution to contemporary Husserl scholarship.

We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is absent—forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured.

In The Shadow Of The Object is the exploration of psychoanalysis, of the reliving through language of that which is known but not yet thought.

Proposes that philosophy is the proper cure for neurosis.

A phenomenological account of spatial perception in relation to the lived body. -/- The Sense of Space brings together space and body to show that space is a plastic environment, charged with meaning, that reflects the distinctive character of human embodiment in the full range of its moving, perceptual, emotional, expressive, developmental, and social capacities. Drawing on the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Bergson, as well as contemporary psychology to develop a renewed account of the moving, perceiving body, the book suggests (...) that our sense of space ultimately reflects our ethical relations to other people and to the places we inhabit. (shrink)