Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Author profile

born

March 14, 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime, France

died

May 03, 1961

gender

male

website

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/merleau-ponty/

genre

Philosophy, Nonfiction

influences

Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Nietzsche, Bergson, Huss...more

About this author

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Maurice Merleau-Ponty (pronounced [mɔʁis mɛʁlopɔ̃ti] in French; March 14, 1908 – May 3, 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like the other major phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, and politics; however Merleau-Ponty was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the Twentieth Century to engage extensively with the sciences, and especially...more Maurice Merleau-Ponty (pronounced [mɔʁis mɛʁlopɔ̃ti] in French; March 14, 1908 – May 3, 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like the other major phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, and politics; however Merleau-Ponty was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the Twentieth Century to engage extensively with the sciences, and especially with descriptive psychology. Because of this engagement, his writings have become influential with the recent project of naturalizing phenomenology in which phenomenologists utilize the results of psychology and cognitive science.

Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime. His father was killed in World War 1 when Merleau-Ponty was 3. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.

Merleau-Ponty first taught at Chartres, then became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).

After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.

Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for Les Temps Modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. Aged 53, he died suddenly of a stroke in 1961, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes. He was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

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Average rating: 4.12 · 1,359 ratings · 66 reviews · 53 distinct works

	Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Colin Smith (Translator) 4.15 avg rating — 846 ratings — published 1945 — 20 editions	My rating:
	The Visible and the Invisible by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alphonso Lingis (Translator) 4.29 avg rating — 111 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	The Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, James M. Edie, William S. Cobb (Translator) 3.94 avg rating — 86 ratings — published 1964 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Sense and Nonsense by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Herbert L. Dreyfus (Translator), Patrica A. Dreyfus (Translator) 4.04 avg rating — 46 ratings — published 1964 — 3 editions	My rating:
	The World of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Oliver Davis (Translator) 3.79 avg rating — 68 ratings — published 2004 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Signs by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Richard C. McCleary (Translator) 4.29 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 1964 — 5 editions	My rating:
	Humanism and Terror: An Essay on the Communist Problem 3.88 avg rating — 25 ratings — published 1980 — 4 editions	My rating:
	L'oeil et l'esprit 4.04 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 1961 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Structure of Behavior 4.16 avg rating — 19 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Prose of the World by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lefort (Editor), John O'Neill (Translation) 3.89 avg rating — 18 ratings — published 1973 — 4 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

“The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself. ”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty

17 people liked it

“We know not through our intellect but through our experience.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty

14 people liked it

“The body is our general medium for having a world.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

tags: body , perspective , phenomenology

9 people liked it

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Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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combine editionsBooks by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Quotes by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Topics Mentioning This Author

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Books by Maurice Merleau-Ponty