Maurice Merleau-Ponty
We do not think the world from a distance: we grasp it through our body, which is already a way of understanding.
Life
French philosopher (1908-1961), professor at the Collège de France and a major figure of phenomenology. He holds that we know the world through our lived body and not as a detached thought, which challenges the separation of mind and body. He matters for the questions on the mind, knowledge and perception.
Main works
Shows that perception is primary and that the lived body is the subject of experience.
Criticises purely mechanical explanations of behaviour.
Unfinished posthumous work on the flesh of the world and the reversibility of seeing and the visible.
In his own words
« Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking of a position; it is the background against which all acts stand out, and it is presupposed by them. »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceKnowledge starts from perceiving with the body; he rejects both pure empiricism and pure intellectualism.
Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (1945)
Perception never gives complete, final certainty: the world stays ambiguous and open.
Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (1945), préface
Mind and body are not two substances: the lived body is the place where consciousness is in the world, neither pure matter nor pure thought.
Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (1945)
Freedom is real but always situated: we are neither fully determined nor absolutely free.
Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (1945), partie III, chap. 3