Assesses the importance of Merleau-Ponty to current and ongoing concerns in contemporary philosophy. Maurice Merleau-Ponty is widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The recent publication of his lecture courses and posthumous working notes has opened new avenues for both the interpretation of his thought and philosophy in general. These works confirm that, with a surprising premonition, Merleau-Ponty addressed many of the issues that concern philosophy today. With the benefit of this fuller picture of his thought, Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy undertakes an assessment of the philosopher’s relevance for contemporary thinking. Covering a diverse range of topics, including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art, the editors gather representative voices from North America and Europe, including both Merleau-Ponty specialists and thinkers who have come to the philosopher’s work through their own thematic interest. “Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy offers a rich set of writings by central and rising scholars, spanning various languages and traditions, who together show Merleau-Ponty’s continuing relevance for contemporary thinking on phenomenology, mind and nature, politics and power, and art and creation. This book will advance scholarship and also open new doors for those seeking to find their way into Merleau-Ponty’s ways of thinking.” — David Morris, author of The Sense of Space

This volume presents the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a great philosopher and social theorist of mid-twentieth century, as a viable alternative to both modernism and postmodernism. Douglas Low argues that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy offers explanations and solves problems that other philosophies grapple with, but do not resolve, given their respective theoretical presuppositions and assumptions. Low brings the work of Merleau-Ponty into critical contact with important thinkers, including Sartre, Heidegger, Derrida, and Marx. He highlights Merleau-Ponty's connection to the early Hegel, especially with regard to the criticism of modernism's "representational consciousness" and its subsequent skepticism with regard to our being in the world. Merleau-Ponty made a concerted effort to solve the problems that come about due to a wide variety of Western dualisms: body and mind, perception and conception, self and other, etc. He frequently does so by demonstrating the connection between these disparate terms, the connection of perception with affect and interest, fact with value, and a broadened view of science with moral and philosophical judgment. Merleau-Ponty's unique contribution is his focus on the lived-through perceiving body and its relationship to abstract thought and language. In his detailed analysis of the work of Merleau-Ponty, Low brings attention to a twentieth-century master capable of altering the landscape of modern and social philosophy in the twenty-first century.

In this first English publication of a well-known and widely respected Italian scholar, readers will encounter the preeminent interpreter of the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty engaged in a dialogue of critical concern to contemporary philosophy. In subtle and sensitive language eminently suited to the style and substance of Merleau-Ponty's own writings, Mauro Carbone fashions four essays around a central theme-the relations of the sensible and the intelligible, and of philosophy and non-philosophy-that occupied Merleau-Ponty in his later work. An original and innovative interpretation of the ontology of Merleau-Ponty--and themselves a significant contribution to the field of Continental thought--these essays constitute a sustained exploration of what Merleau-Ponty detected, and greeted, as a "mutation within the relations of man and Being," which would provide him with the basis for a new idea of philosophy or "a-philosophy." In lucid, often elegant terms, Carbone analyzes key elements of Merleau-Ponty's thought in relation to Proust's Recherche, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, the new biology of Von Uexküll, Rimbaud's Lettre du voyant, and Heidegger's conception of "letting-be." His work clearly demonstrates the vitality of Merleau-Ponty's late revolutionary philosophy by following its most salient, previously unexplored paths. This is essential reading for any scholar with an interest in Merleau-Ponty, in the questions of embodiment, temporality and Nature, or in the possibility of philosophy today.

A clear and comprehensive introduction to the thought of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty

This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to develop new and promising solutions to contemporary debates about perception. In providing an extension and defense of Merleau-Ponty's account of perceptual content and of the relation between perception and the world, it demonstrates the value of Merleau-Ponty's insights for philosophy of perception today. The author focuses on two main topics: the contents and the nature of perception. In the first half of this book, the author tackles debates about the content of perception, namely, what sorts of properties or features of the world reveal themselves to us in perception and in what modes. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s description of perceptual “sense,” the author argues that perception has a unique kind of content, which cannot be adequately described in terms of sensations or concepts. He then shows how this account of perceptual sense can clarify debates about the richness of perceptual content, including whether we can perceive moral properties. In the second half, he turns to the nature of perception. Here he argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perceptual intentionality makes available a powerful combination of the core insights of two main contemporary approaches to this question: realism and intentionalism. The author shows how this combination can be developed, defends it from objections, and explains how it is equipped to deal with problems posed by the existence of illusions and hallucinations. Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy of Perception will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on phenomenology and the philosophy of perception.

Argues that symbolism is an important and unique element of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty says in his Institution and Passivity lectures that he wants to “consider criticism itself as a symbolic form” instead of doing “a philosophy of symbolic form.” This invites the possibility of an unconventional thought: If critical philosophy is a symbolic form, it cannot disclose its own limits and is, in fact, uncritical. Furthermore, the symbolic form can never itself be thought according to the terms of the criticism it produces but is always only constellated and matrixed within them—a symbolic form within both reflection and what it reflects on, within consciousness and the world. Thus, as Rajiv Kaushik argues, the symbolic form is another name for what Merleau-Ponty calls ontological divergence. Only now divergence introduces the question of a limit to both the subject and philosophy itself. This is nothing less than a psychoanalysis of philosophy. Kaushik’s analyses of the matrices between space—imagination, light—dark, awake—asleep, and repression—expression reveal this symbolism in its form of divergence, its lack of origin and destination. Kaushik also argues that the phenomenology of symbolism must detour from the purely descriptive method. Drawing from Merleau-Ponty’s recently published course materials, and attentive to his reliance on literature and literary language, Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism continues the living force of Merleau-Ponty’s thought and develops his radical insight of the primacy of the symbolic form, even in an ontology that claims to be about the sensible and its elements. “One of the best, most original books in Merleau-Ponty studies in recent years.” — Galen A. Johnson, author of The Retrieval of the Beautiful: Thinking Through Merleau-Ponty’s Aesthetics

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

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.

Merleau-Ponty in contemporary perspective: this was the theme of the conference at the Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K. U. L. ) from 29 November to 1 December 1991. Thirty years after Merleau Ponty's untimely death, it seemed appropriate to bring together scholars from Europe and from the United States of America to reappraise his philosophy. In fact, a significant body of scholarship has emerged which would seem to attest to the continuing importance of his thought for a variety of disciplines within the humanities, the social sciences, and the philosophy of nature. In the present volume, Gary Brent Madison addresses the issue whether Merleau-Ponty can be considered to be a classical philosopher. The fact that his work is one of the highlights of the phenomenological tradition and is of continuing inspiration for researchers in various domains seems to justify that claim. Yet, it is the feeling of many of the contributors to this volume that the so-called "second Merleau-Ponty" is still not really known. The unfinished state of The Visible and the Invisible and the cryptic condition of many of the "Working Notes" may be responsible for that. More research should be done, to uncover "the unsaid" of Merleau-Ponty. lowe to a remark of Paul Ricoeur in his introduction to the work of G. B. Madison, La Phenomenologie de Merleau-Ponty. Une recherche des limites de la conscience (Paris, Klincksieck, 1973, p.

In this introduction to the life and thought of one of the most important French thinkers of the twentieth-century Eric Matthews shows how Merleau-Ponty has contributed to current debates in philosophy, such as the nature of consciousness, the relation between biology and personality, the historical understanding of human thought and society, and many others. Surveying the whole range of Merleau-Ponty's thinking, the author examines his views about the nature of phenomenology and the primacy of perception; his account of human embodiment, being-in-the-world, and his understanding of human behaviour; his conception of the self and its relation to other selves; and, his views on society, politics, and the arts. A final chapter considers his later thought, published posthumously. The ideas of Merleau-Ponty are shown to be of immense importance to the development of French philosophy and the author evaluates his distinctive contributions and relates his thought to that of his predecessors, contemporaries and successors, both in France and elsewhere. This unrivalled introduction will be welcomed by philosophers and cognitive scientists as well as students taking courses in contemporary continental philosophy.