'Painting does not imitate the world, but is a world of its own.'
In 1948, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote and delivered on French radio a series of seven lectures on the theme of perception. Translated here into English for the first time, they offer a lucid and concise insight into one of the great philosophical minds of the twentieth-century.
These lectures explore themes central not only to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy but phenomenology as a whole. He begins by rejecting the idea - inherited from Descartes and influential within science - that perception is unreliable and prone to...

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 Structure of Behavior The Phenomenology of...

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...

Raymond Aron called Merleau-Ponty "the most influential French philosopher of his generation." First published in France in 1947, Humanism and Terror was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two ideological armed camps. For Merleau-Ponty, the central question was: could Communism transcend its violence and intentions? The value of a society is the value it places upon man's relation to man, Merleau-Ponty examines not only the Moscow trials of the late thirties...

First published in France In 1947, Merleau-Ponty's essay was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's novel, Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two armed camps. For Merleau-Ponty, the basic question was: given the violence in Communism, is Communism still equal to its humanist intentions?

Starting with the assumption that a society is not a "temple of value-idols that figure on the front of its monuments or in its constitutional scrolls; the value of a society is the value It places upon...

""Speech is a way of tearing out a meaning from an undivided whole.""
Thus does Maurice Merleau-Ponty describe speech in this collection of his important writings on the philosophy of expression, composed during the last decade of his life. For him, expression is a category of human behavior and existence much broader than language alone. He maintains that man is essentially expressive, even prior to speaking: in his silence, gestures, and lived behavior.

The first reader to offer a comprehensive view of Maurice Merleau-Ponty s (1908-1961) work, this selection collects in one volume the foundational essays necessary for understanding the core of this critical twentieth-century philosopher s thought.
Arranged chronologically, the essays are grouped in three sections corresponding to the major periods of Merleau-Ponty s work: First, the years prior to his appointment to the Sorbonne in 1949, the early, existentialist period during which he wrote important works on the phenomenology of perception and the primacy of perception; second, the...

This book contains the unfinished manuscript and working notes of the book Merleau-Ponty was writing when he died. The text is devoted to a critical examination of Kantian, Husserlian, Bergsonian, and Sartrean method, followed by one extraordinary chapter, 'The Intertwining - The Chiasm, ' that reveals the central pattern of Merleau-Ponty's own thought. The working notes for the book provide the reader with a truly exciting insight into the mind of the philosopher at work as he refines and develops new pivotal concepts.