Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) is situated in the crossroads of several schools of thought which converged in his philosophy in such a way that what resulted cannot be considered as the outcome of any particular influence. Neither existentialism, nor Marxism, nor even phenomenology – to which Merleau-Ponty nonetheless made an enormous contribution – can account for the sudden emergence of his original thought on visibility which involves man in an entirely unprecedented way and deploys down through history in directions which still bring us insights because of their capacity to thwart classic alternatives. In fact, it would be a serious error to reduce Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy to a theory or a practice: it is both an ontology and a philosophy of History, a form of aesthetics and a philosphy of knowledge. This work thus aims to be a primer for readers who are just beginning to explore the works of this modern-day Socrates who managed to rediscover the interrogative substance of philosophy.Works include: La Structure du comportement [English edition: The Structure of Behavior] (1942); Phénoménologie de la perception [English edition: Phenomenology of Perception] (1945); and Le Visible et l’Invisible (1964) [English posthumous edition: The Visible and the Invisible].