Whereas Phenomenology of Perception concludes with a puzzling turn to “heroism,” this article examines the short essay “Man, the Hero” as a source of insight into Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the early postwar period. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty presented a conception of heroism through which he expressed the attitude toward post-Hegelian philosophy of history that underwrote his efforts to reform Marxism along existential lines. Analyzing this conception of heroism by unpacking the implicit contrasts with Kojève, Aron, Caillois, and Bataille, (...) I show that its philosophical rationale was to supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality. It is a mythic device intended to animate the faith necessary for Marxist politics by showing that universal sociality is possible, and that the historically transformative praxis needed to realize it does not imply sacrifice. This sheds considerable light on Merleau-Ponty’s early postwar political thought. But inasmuch as the latter cannot be severed from his broader philosophical concerns, the prospect is raised that his entire phenomenological project in the early postwar period rested on a myth. Not necessarily a bad myth, but a myth nonetheless. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's _Phenomenology of Perception_ is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important contributions to philosophy of the twentieth century. In this volume, leading philosophers from Europe and North America examine the nature and extent of Merleau-Ponty's achievement and consider its importance to contemporary philosophy. The chapters, most of which were specially commissioned for this volume, cover the central aspects of Merleau-Ponty's influential work. These include: Merleau-Ponty’s debt to Husserl Merleau-Ponty’s conception of philosophy (...) perception, action and the role of the body consciousness and self-consciousness naturalism and language social rules and freedom. Contributors: David Smith, Sean Kelly, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall, Thomas Baldwin, Simon Glendinning, Naomi Eilan, Eran Dorfman, Francoise Dastur. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception - a canonical text of twentieth-century philosophy - concludes with an appeal to 'heroism' by citing a series of enigmatic sentences drawn from Saint-Exupe;ry's Pilote de guerre. Surprisingly, however, these lines are antithetical to the philosophical thrust of Merleau-Ponty's project. This book aims to explain this situation. Foregrounding liminal themes in Merleau-Ponty's thought that have been largely overlooked - e.g., sacrifice, death, myth, faith - and showing how these themes support Merleau-Ponty's reinterpretation (...) of Husserlian phenomenology, Smyth shows that Merleau-Ponty's appeal to 'heroism' represents an extra-philosophical appeal to a historical purposiveness as a universal feature of human nature, and that Merleau-Ponty makes this appeal in virtue of his recognition of the intrinsic methodological limitations of philosophy as a theoretical endeavor. The book thus recovers the 'militant' dimension of Merleau-Ponty's thought. This sheds considerable new light on his work. It does so in a way that challenges some of the basic parameters of existing Merleau-Ponty scholarship by illuminating the intrinsic normativity of his existential phenomenology, and its epistemic reliance on forms of non-reason such as faith and myth. (shrink)

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)

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)

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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

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

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.

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)

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.

The paper revisits the discussion of freedom in the Phenomenology of Perception and considers how according to Merleau-Ponty a phenomenology of freedom must challenge the tradition that attempts to account for experience and appearance through the filter of reflective consciousness. The paper begins by posing this problem in broad historical terms, as a distinctly modern predicament, and briefly considers Schelling’s philosophical engagement with negative philosophy as a provocation and historical precedent for reading the phenomenological work of (...) class='Hi'>Merleau-Ponty. It is noted that Schelling’s criticism of the formal freedom of Kant prefi gures Merleau-Ponty’s polemic against Sartrean freedom, although the claim is also made that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of freedom remains irreducible to the terms established by this polemic, since what appears is a freedom no longer determined by consciousness and reflection. Before turning to the reading of the Phenomenology of Perception, a single passage is also adduced from The Visible and Invisible in order to demonstrate how the concern elaborated in the Phenomenology runs throughout Merleau-Ponty’s work, namely, that a phenomenological interrogation of experience must break down the boundaries of what is properly one’s own as this would be defined in and by the reflective act. The reading of the Phenomenology then proceeds by showing how the entire work is framed by the possibility of transforming philosophical practice through an overturning of the dominant paradigm of reflection. The paper interrogates in this light the Preface, the chapter on Descartes’ cogito and the concluding chapter on freedom. A connection is drawn between the appearance of the “tacit” cogito and the elaboration of freedom that ends by insisting upon the necessity of silence. (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)

This book consists of Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.

At the time of his death in May 1961, Maurice Merleau-Ponty held the chair of Philosophy at the College de France. Together with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, he was cofounder of the successful and influential review Les Temps Modernes. However, after Merleau-Ponty's two studies of Marxist theory and practice (Humanisme et Terreur and Les Aventures de la Dialectique), he alienated both orthodox Marxists and "mandarins of the left" such as Sartre and de Beauvoir. Perhaps his most (...) lasting contribution to the interpretation of human existence was his formulation of a positive philosophical approach to psychology the foundations of which were clearly outlined in The Structure of Behavior and later more fully developed in Phenomenology of Perception. (shrink)

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)

The Sensible World and the World of Expression presents the lecture notes for a course taught by Maurice Marleau-Ponty, a central figure of phenomenological philosophy, at a key point in his career.

The work which this author planned to call The Prose of the World, or Introduction to the Prose of the World, is unfinished. There is good reason to believe that he deliberately abandoned it and that, he had lived, he would not have completed it, at least in the form that he first outlined. Once finished, the book was to constitute the first section of a two-part work--the second would have had a more distinct metaphysical nature--whose aim was to offer (...) us, as an extension of the Phenomenology of Perception, a theory of truth. (shrink)

As people age their actions often become entrenched—we might say they are not open to the new; they are less able to adapt; they are stuck in a rut. Indeed, in The Coming of Age (La Vieillesse) Simone de Beauvoir writes that to be old is to be condemned neither to freedom nor to meaning, but rather to boredom (Beauvoir 1996, 461; 486). While in many ways a very pessimistic account of ageing, the text does provide promising moments where (...) her descriptions do capture other possibilities for aged existence. In particular, I turn to Beauvoir’s suggestion that habit can take on a “kind of poetry” since it merges past, present and future in a sense of eternity that the present moment now lacks with its limited futural horizon (468; 492). In this paper, I draw out, delineate, and further explore this phenomenological reconfiguration of the present that she gestures towards through a consideration of the intensification and modification of the present through habit. Drawing as well upon Merleau-Ponty’s insights into the phenomenal body, I argue that poetical habit is an active passivity that allows for the spontaneity of the new out of the sedimentation of corporeal memory, and for the attentive perception of what appears in the present. To disrupt someone’s habitual life is to unanchor that life from the world, from an identity shaped by repetition, by the constancy of a shared reality of things, that is, from the spatial-temporal process of inhabitation, and thus from her ability to engage with others and to disclose the world. (shrink)

This article studies a link between perception and politics by seeking, in Merleau-Ponty’s work, something like a “mirror relation” in the domains of encounters of love and politics. While in Phenomenology of Perception the analysis of sexuality seemingly renders love impossible, in the courses on Institution, Merleau-Ponty affirms the possibility of love by characterizing it as an institution, a sensible idea, a “mirror relation”. When the lover demands signs of love from the loved one, he demands to see (...) in the eyes, the voice, and the experience of the other his own reflection, the reflection of his experience, his words, his gestures, and the demand of love that he is formulating. The promise of love is thus an institution of sense which sheds a new light on all actions past and future, it is a way of overcoming contingency. Conceiving of politics as a “mirror relation” thus means adopting a careful philosophy that observes the event like a mirror and gives place to sensible ideas, at the intersection of gazes understood as a “type of reflection”. (shrink)

The chapter on temporality in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception , is situated in a section titled, “Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World.” As such, Merleau-Ponty’s task in the chapter on temporality is to bring these two positions together, in other words, to articulate the manner in which time links the cogito (Being-for-Itself) with freedom (Being-in-the-World). To accomplish this, Merleau-Ponty proposes a subject located at the junction of the for-itself and the in-itself, a subject which has an exterior that makes (...) it possible for others to have an interior. This analysis will take Merleau-Ponty to an impasse where, on the one hand, there appears to be an objective world and the time of objects in that world, and on the other, there is the subject’s notion of events and the passing of time. Referring to Bergson’s notion of time, this essay proposes that there must be a temporal interval between perception, feeling and action in order for the subject to be “temporal by means of an inner necessity,” as Merleau-Ponty prescribes. (shrink)

Two of the most basic commitments of virtue ethics, both ancient and contemporary, are that virtue is knowledge and that this knowledge is a kind of moral sensitivity that is best understood on the model of perception. On this account, the virtuous agent perceives moral goodness and badness in something like the way we perceive that a smiling person is happy or that a raging bull is dangerous. This is opposed to the more widely held view of moral experience, according (...) to which perception informs us only of nonmoral states of affairs; the specifically moral content of the experience, on this view, comes either from distinct pro or con attitudes toward those states of affairs or from general principles that we apply... (shrink)

It is over forty years since Merleau-Ponty published his first major work, Le structure de comportement (‘The Structure of Behaviour’) (1942) and a quarter of a century since he died. He belongs, therefore, with Sartre and Marcel, to the first post-War generation of French philosophers. Like his friend Sartre's, his philosophy may be regarded as dated, passé, of no interest or relevance to truly contemporary thought. In philosophical terms forty years are nothing; in terms of trends, fashions and novelties (...) they are an eternity. But perhaps the work of Merleau-Ponty has not dated because it was never in vogue. He did not write plays and novels, or take part in political demonstrations, though he was involved in politics, or win a Nobel prize and refuse to receive it. He was very much a philosopher's philosopher, eminent in his field, well known in academic circles in France but hardly a household name. In this country he is hardly known even in philosophical circles, except by name. More is the pity, since his philosophical approach and manner of philosophizing have much in common with certain modes of British philosophizing, as I hope to show. (shrink)

It is over forty years since Merleau-Ponty published his first major work, Le structure de comportement (‘The Structure of Behaviour’) (1942) and a quarter of a century since he died. He belongs, therefore, with Sartre and Marcel, to the first post-War generation of French philosophers. Like his friend Sartre's, his philosophy may be regarded as dated, passé, of no interest or relevance to truly contemporary thought. In philosophical terms forty years are nothing; in terms of trends, fashions and novelties (...) they are an eternity. But perhaps the work of Merleau-Ponty has not dated because it was never in vogue. He did not write plays and novels, or take part in political demonstrations, though he was involved in politics, or win a Nobel prize and refuse to receive it. He was very much a philosopher's philosopher, eminent in his field, well known in academic circles in France but hardly a household name. In this country he is hardly known even in philosophical circles, except by name. More is the pity, since his philosophical approach and manner of philosophizing have much in common with certain modes of British philosophizing, as I hope to show. (shrink)

Although the fact that Merleau-Ponty has a dialectical approach in Phenomenology of Perception has been discussed in recent Anglophone readings, there has not been an explicit clarification as to how his varying usages of the term hang together. Given his repeated references to Hegel and to dialectics, coupled with the fact that dialectics are not part of the Husserlian phenomenology or Heideggerean existentialism from which Merleau-Ponty draws so much, the question of just what he does with the idea (...) of dialectics presents itself. In this paper I argue that, in Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau- Ponty saw Hegel as providing a model for the conception of rationality and meaning that must underpin the existentialist response to the problems bequeathed him by Husserlian phenomenology: namely, the problems of embodiment, perception and the constitution of the world. In connection with this, I suggest an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s “existential dialectics” that focuses on his three principal uses of the term: 1) a “dialectic of objective thought,” 2) a set of existential-dialectical categories intended to capture the ontological structure of the “body-subject” as “being-in-the-world,” and 3) a dialectic at the cultural level concerning others and history. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that Merleau-Ponty’s position in Phenomenology of Perception is a unique form of transcendental idealism. The general claim is that in spite of his critique of “Kantianism,” Merleau-Ponty’s position comes out as a form of transcendental idealism that takes the perceptual processes of the lived body as the transcendental constituting condition for the possibility of experience. In this article I critically appraise this claim. I argue that if the term “idealist” is intended in a (...) sufficiently similar sense to Kant’s usage of the term in naming his position as a “transcendental idealism” then it is a misrepresentation to subsume Merleau-Ponty’s position under that term. This is because Merleau-Ponty rejects the transcendental metaphysics of the reflecting subject that underpins transcendental idealism. In its place he advocates a methodological transcendentalism that, whilst being anti-realist, is not idealist. Thus to call his position “a new kind of transcendental idealism,” as Sebastian Gardner has, is to misunderstand the significance of his existentialist break with what he sees as the “intellectualism” of this position. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's claim in Phenomenology of Perception that the anonymous body guarantees an intersubjective world is problematic because it omits the particularities of bodies. This omission produces an account of “dialogue” with another in which I solipsistically hear only myself and dominate others with my intentionality. This essay develops an alternative to projective intentionality called “hypothetical construction,” in which meaning is socially constructed through an appreciation of the differences of others.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is hailed as one of the key philosophers of the twentieth century. _Phenomenology of Perception_ is his most famous and influential work, and an essential text for anyone seeking to understand phenomenology. In this _GuideBook_ Komarine Romdenh-Romluc introduces and assesses: Merleau-Ponty’s life and the background to his philosophy the key themes and arguments of _Phenomenology of Perception_ the continuing importance of Merleau-Ponty’s work to philosophy. _Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception_ is an ideal starting point for (...) anyone coming to his great work for the first time. It is essential reading for students of Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology and related subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss Deleuze’s account of the reversal of Platonism in chapter one of Difference and Repetition, tying it together with Merleau-Ponty’s work on perception. In Difference and Repetition, there are only two references to Merleau-Ponty – one in the note on Heidegger that was added at the insistence of his examiners, and one brief mention in a footnote. Nonetheless, as we shall see, many of the discussions of the origin of representation, as well as (...) the relation of the determinate to the indeterminate in the structure of difference, and the nature of depth, draw heavily on Merleau-Ponty’s work. While there has been some recognition of this influence, I want to draw out some specific points where Deleuze draws on Merleau-Ponty within chapter one of Difference and Repetition. On the other side, as far as I am aware, there is no sustained discussion of Plato in Merleau-Ponty’s work. In showing how Deleuze takes up Merleau-Ponty in his explicit project of reversing Plato, I want to show that the move to a philosophy of the simulacrum is synonymous with Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of perception. I will begin by talking about Plato and representation, which ends the chapter, before returning to the beginning of the chapter to look at the nature of difference, then turning to the question of how representation covers over difference. I want to conclude by looking at what Deleuze considers to be the limitations of Merleau-Ponty’s account. (shrink)

La dissonance permanente de l’être.L’extension du champ transcendental dans Phénoménologie de la perceptionRépondant aux reproches d’idéalisme subjectif qui hantent la Phénoménologie de la perception depuis sa publication, le présent essai affirme que l’intention deMerleau-Ponty dans ce texte n’est pas de soutenir la primauté ontologique de la conscience constituante transcendantale, mais de restaurer une certaine« épaisseur temporelle » (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 459) à la théorie de la genèse du sens. Dans Le champ phénoménal, Le cogito, et finalement dans certaines des réflexions (...) de Merleau-Ponty sur la peinture, l’enjeu dans sa conception du champ transcendantal n’est pas une nouvelle théorie de la consciencetranscendantale, mais la possibilité de penser les conditions du sens d’une manière qui reconnaît leur extension temporelle. Le résultat est que la réductionphénoménologique ne se résout pas à une série de conditions éternitaires, mais dévoile le champ transcendantal comme la dissonance permanente, temporelle de l’être dans son éclatement expressif : le champ transcendantal n’est donc pas, par conséquent, un λόγος, accordingly, mais un cri.La permanente dissonanza dell’essere.L’estensione del campo trascendentale in Fenomenologia della percezioneRispondendo alle osservazioni critiche riguardo il residuo di idealismo soggettivistico che hanno perseguitato Fenomenologia della percezione fin dalla sua pubblicazione, questo saggio afferma che l’intenzione di Merleau-Ponty in quest’opera non è sostenere il primato ontologico del trascendentale, della coscienza costituente, bensì restituire un certo “spessore temporale” (Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, 456) alla comprensione della genesi del senso. A partire da Le champ phenomenal, Le cogito, ed infine da alcune riflessioni merleau-pontiane sulla pittura, quello che è in gioco nella presa in conto del campo trascendentale non è una nuova teoria della coscienza trascendentale, ma la possibilità di pensare le condizioni del senso in un modo che ne riconosca l’estensione temporale. Il risultato è che la riduzione fenomenologica non si risolve in una serie di condizioni eternitarie, ma dischiude invece il campo trascendentale come la permanente dissonanza temporale dell’essere nel suo éclatement espressivo: il campo trascendentale, dunque, non è un λόγος, ma un grido. (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 ...

RESUMEN Se examinan de modo sistemático las críticas de Merleau-Ponty, en la Phénoménologie de la perception, a la teoría kantiana de la experiencia, atendiendo al papel de los conceptos en la conformación de la experiencia objetiva, la relación entre la sensibilidad y el entendimiento, así como la redefinición del carácter formal de la sensibilidad. Se discuten posibles objeciones a la interpretación merieau-pontiana de la teoría kantiana y se evalúa, así mismo, el alcance relativo de ciertas referencias positivas de (...) class='Hi'>Merleau-Ponty a nociones kantianas tales como afinidad, sinopsis e imaginación. ABSTRACT The article carries out a systematic examination of Merleau-Ponty's critiques of the Kantian theory of experience, in Phénoménologie de la perception, taking into account the role of concepts in shaping objective experience, the relation between sensibility and understanding, and the redefinition of the formal nature of sensibility. It discusses possible objections to Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of Kantian theory and assesses the relative scope of some of Merleau-Ponty's positive references to Kantian notions such as affinity, synopsis, and imagination. (shrink)

This is an advanced introduction to and original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's greatest work, Phenomenology of Perception. Timothy Mooney provides a clear and compelling exposition of the theory of our projective being in the world, and demonstrates as never before the centrality of the body schema in the theory. Thanks to the schema's motor intentionality our bodies inhabit and appropriate space: our postures and perceptual fields are organised schematically when we move to realise our projects. Thus our lived bodies are (...) ineliminably expressive in being both animated and outcome oriented through-and-through. Mooney also analyses the place of the work in the modern philosophical world, showing what Merleau-Ponty takes up from the Kantian and Phenomenological traditions and what he contributes to each. Casting a fresh light on his magnum opus, this book is essential reading for all those interested in the philosophy and phenomenology of the body. (shrink)

This is a concordance of page numbers in the following editions of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: English editions prior to the Routledge Classics 2002; Routledge Classics edition, with the new pagination; the French edition from Gallimard, prior to 2005; the 2e edition from Gallimard, 2005, with new pagination.

In this paper I explore a series of fertile ambiguities that Merleau-Ponty’s work is premised upon. These ambiguities concern some of the central methodological commitments of his work, in particular his commitment to transcendental phenomenology and how he transforms that tradition, and his relationship to science and philosophical naturalism and what they suggest about his philosophical methodology. Many engagements with Merleau-Ponty’s work that are more ‘analytic’ in orientation either deflate it of its transcendental heritage, or offer a “modest” (...) rendering of its transcendental dimensions. This is also true, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent, of the work of the more empirically-minded phenomenological philosophers who engage very seriously with Merleau-Ponty—e.g. Hubert Dreyfus, Shaun Gallagher, Evan Thompson, Alva Noë, and others. At the same time, many other scholars contest these proto-scientific and more naturalistic uses of Merleau-Ponty’s work on hermeneutical and exegetical grounds, and they likewise criticise the deflated reading of his transcendental phenomenology that tends to support them. By working through some of the key passages and ideas, this paper establishes that the former view captures something pivotal to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. I also extend these interpretations by arguing that, at least around the time of Phenomenology of Perception, his philosophy might be reasonably regarded as a form of minimal methodological naturalism. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s relationship with his Sorbonne professor Léon Brunschvicg is usually disregarded or mentioned by scholars as a mere anecdote. Moreover, the rare discussions of the latter’s “critical idealism” usually take at face value Merleau-Ponty’s partial and biased account. In contrast, this paper argues that in order to understand the genesis of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, it is necessary to reassess Brunschvicg’s idealism and his views on the relationship between perception and scientific knowledge. Particular attention is drawn to a specific (...) chapter of Brunschvicg’s masterwork L’Expérience humaine et la causalité physique, entitled “Théorie intellectualiste de la perception”. Therein is articulated the theory of perception that Merleau-Ponty never ceased to contest, and of which his entire oeuvre constitutes a reversal. However, far from highlighting only the elements of opposition, the author also points out the thematic continuity that survives the generational gap between the two authors. (shrink)