Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (French: [mis mlop ti];

14 March 1908 3 May 1961) was a French
phenomenological philosopher, strongly inuenced by
Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art and politics. He was
on the editorial board of Les Temps modernes, the leftist
magazine created by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1945.
At the core of Merleau-Pontys philosophy is a sustained
argument for the foundational role perception plays in
understanding the world as well as engaging with the
world. Like the other major phenomenologists, MerleauPonty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on
art, literature, linguistics, and politics. He was the only
major phenomenologist of the rst half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and
especially with descriptive psychology. It is through
this engagement that his writings have become inuential in the recent project of naturalizing phenomenology,
in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology
and cognitive science.
Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site
of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of
knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which
it perceived could not be disentangled from each other.
The articulation of the primacy of embodiment led him
away from phenomenology towards what he was to call
indirect ontology or the ontology of the esh of the
world (la chair du monde), seen in his last incomplete
work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, Eye and Mind.

Merleau-Pontys grave at Pre Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where

he was buried with his mother Louise and his wife Suzanne

in 1935 became a tutor at the cole Normale Suprieure,

where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two
important books: La structure du comportement (1942)
and Phnomnologie 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.[11] He
was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collge de
1 Life
France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him
Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.
Charente-Maritime, France. His father died in 1913 Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also politiwhen Merleau-Ponty was ve years old.[10] After sec- cal editor for Les Temps modernes from the founding
ondary schooling at the lyce Louis-le-Grand in Paris, of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the cole In his youth he had read Karl Marx's writings[12] and
Normale Suprieure, where he studied alongside Jean- Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him
Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. He to Marxism.[13] Their friendship ended over a quarrel as
passed the agrgation in philosophy in 1930.
he became disillusioned about communism, while Sartre
Merleau-Ponty taught rst at the Lyce de Beauvais still endorsed it.
(193133) and then got a fellowship to do research from Merleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age
the Caisse Nationale de la Recherche Scientique. From 53, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes.
19341935 he taught at the Lyce de Chartres. He then He is buried in Pre Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
1

2
2.1

2 THOUGHT

Thought

we encounter meaningful things in a unied though ever

open-ended world.

Consciousness
2.2 The primacy of perception

In his Phenomenology of Perception (rst published in

French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty developed the concept
of the body-subject as an alternative to the Cartesian
cogito. This distinction is especially important in that
Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body
as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually engaged. The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate
of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking
up and communing with (Merleau-Pontys phrase) the
sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated
subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an everpresent world frame, through use of its pre-conscious,
prepredicative understanding of the worlds makeup. The
elaboration, however, is inexhaustible (the hallmark of
any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are
that upon which our body has a grip (prise), while the
grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the
worlds things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing becoming.
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain
moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on
the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for
things to be copresent with us and with other things than
through such "Abschattungen" (sketches, faint outlines,
adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is
manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied
to its backgroundto the nexus of meaningful relations
among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each
object reects the other (much in the style of Leibnizs
monads). Through involvement in the world being-inthe-world the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it.
Each object is a mirror of all others. Our perception of
the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception. Rather, it is
an ambiguous perception founded upon the bodys primordial involvement and understanding of the world and
of the meanings that constitute the landscapes perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within
the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we
turn our attention toward particular objects within the
landscape so as to dene them more clearly. (This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is
already seen, but by constructing a new gestalt oriented
toward a particular object.) Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate,

From the time of writing Structure of Behavior and

Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty wanted to
show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition
beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the
causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal
conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism.
According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active
dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the
lifeworld (to the "Lebenswelt").
This primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the
primacy of perception. The slogan of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl is all consciousness is consciousness of something, which implies a distinction between
acts of thought (the noesis) and intentional objects of
thought (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the rst step in the constitution of
analyses of consciousness.
However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts
of Husserl, who remained one of his major inuences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution,
Husserls work brings to light phenomena which are not
assimilable to noesisnoema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the
body (which is at once body-subject and body-object),
subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an
act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the
other (the rst considerations of the other in Husserl led
to solipsism).
The distinction between acts of thought (noesis) and
"intentional objects of thought (noema) does not seem,
therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears
rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty
does not postulate that all consciousness is consciousness of something, which supposes at the outset a noeticnoematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which all consciousness is perceptual consciousness. In doing so, he establishes a signicant turn in the
development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the
primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical
consequences of this thesis.

2.3 Corporeity
Taking the study of perception as his point of departure,
Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that ones own body
(le corps propre) is not only a thing, a potential object of
study for science, but is also a permanent condition of
experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to

2.4

Language

3
transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of ones cultural life.

Ren Descartes

the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is

an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which
the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signies a primacy of experience, so Ferdinand de Saussure
to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and
constitutive dimension.
Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so
stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and
body in Ren Descartes, a philosopher to whom MerleauPonty continually returned, despite the important dierences that separate them. In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty wrote: Insofar as I have hands,
feet; a body, I sustain around me intentions which are
not dependent on my decisions and which aect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose (1962, p. 440).
The question concerning corporeity connects also with
Merleau-Pontys reections on space (l'espace) and the
primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (tre au monde;
to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of ones own
body (le corps propre).[14]

2.4

Language

The highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically

has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of The Structure of Behavior that is constantly
reiterated in Merleau-Pontys later works. Following this
theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that

He carefully considers language, then, as the core of

culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense enriching his
perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of
language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.
This work deals mainly with language, beginning with the
reection on artistic expression in The Structure of Behavior which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203)
that pregures the remarks that he develops in Czannes
Doubt (1945) and follows the discussion in Phenomenology of Perception. The work, undertaken while serving as
the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought.
As the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out
in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the
acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly
take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure
through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics
and social anthropology.

2.5

4 INFLUENCE

Art

The attention Merleau-Ponty pays to diverse forms of art

(visual, plastic, literary, poetic, etc.) should not be attributed to a concern with beauty per se. Nor is his work
an attempt to elaborate normative criteria for art. Thus,
one does not nd in his work a theoretical attempt to discern what constitutes a major work or a work of art, or
even handicraft.
While he does not establish any normative criteria for
art as such, there is nonetheless in his work a prevalent distinction between primary and secondary modes
of expression. This distinction appears in Phenomenology of Perception (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is
sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language (le langage parl et le langage parlant) (The Prose
of the World, p. 10). Spoken language (le langage parl), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as
well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and
signications. Speaking language (le langage parlant), or
primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at
the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.

which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Pontys reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malrauxs theory of
art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.)[16] For Merleau-Ponty, style is born
of the interaction between two or more elds of being.
Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious
style of the world, of Nature.

2.6 Science

In his essay Czannes Doubt, in which he identies

Czannes impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reection, the attempt to return to, and reect on, prereective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identies science as the opposite of
art. In Merleau-Pontys account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individuals perception, science is
anti-individualistic. In the preface to his Phenomenology
of Perception, Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing
about human subjectivity. All that a scientic text can
explain is the particular individual experience of that sciIt is speaking language, that is to say, primary expres- entist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty,
sion, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomattention through his treatment of the nature of produc- ena that it endeavors to explain.
tion and the reception of expressions, a subject which also
Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto
overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of
abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perperception, as well as the links between freedom and exception, for example, explain perception in terms that are
ternal conditions.
only arrived at after abstracting from the phenomenon itThe notion of style occupies an important place in In- self. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to
direct Language and the Voices of Silence. In spite of be the area in which a complete account of nature may
certain similarities with Andr Malraux, Merleau-Ponty be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot
distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleauconceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Pontys attempt to ground science in phenomenological
Malrauxs The Voices of Silence. Merleau-Ponty remarks objectivity and, in essence, institute a return to the phethat in this work style is sometimes used by Malraux nomena.
in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection
of the artists individuality. Sometimes it is used, on
the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau3 Did Merleau-Ponty write a
Pontys opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is conNovel?
nected with a conception of an "ber-artist expressing
the Spirit of Painting. Finally, it sometimes is reduced
to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school An article published in French newspaper Le Monde
or movement. (However, this account of Malrauxs no- in October 2014 makes the case of recent discovertion of stylea key element in his thinkingis very ies about Merleau-Pontys likely authorship of the novel
questionable.[15] )
Nord. Rcit de l'actique (Grasset, 1928). Convergent
For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of sources from close friends (Simone de Beauvoir, Elisastyle that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage be- beth Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt about the fact that
tween the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting behind the pseudonym Jacques Heller, it is the 20-year
[17]
and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a old Merleau-Ponty who is hiding.
conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to
Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart
of this problematic, by recognizing that style is rst 4 Inuence
of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception,

4.3

4.1

Ecophenomenology

Anticognitivist cognitive science

Merleau-Pontys critical position with respect to science

was stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology he described scientic points of view as always both naive
and at the same time dishonest. Despite, or perhaps
because of, this view, his work inuenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as postcognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in
emphasising the relevance of Maurice Merleau-Pontys
work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism
of the traditional view of cognitive science.

5
dition, including Rosalyn Diprose and Sara Heinmaa
().
Rosalyn Diproses recent work takes advantage of
Merleau-Pontys conception of an intercorporeity, or
indistinction of perspectives, to critique individualistic
identity politics from a feminist perspective and to ground
the irreducibility of generosity as a virtue, where generosity has a dual sense of giving and being given.

Sara Heinmaa has argued for a rereading of MerleauPontys inuence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also
challenged Hubert Dreyfuss reading of Merleau-Ponty as
behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the pheDreyfuss seminal critique of cognitivism (or the compunomenological reduction to Merleau-Pontys thought.)
tational account of the mind), What Computers Can't Do,
consciously replays Merleau-Pontys critique of intellec- Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of the body has also
tualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corpo- been taken up by Iris Young in her renowned essay
real know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through Throwing Like a Girl, and its follow-up, "'Throwing
the inuence of Dreyfuss critique and neurophysiolog- Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later. Young analyzes the
ical alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as
neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition. they dier from that of men. Young observes that while
a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the
With the publication in 1991 of The Embodied Mind by
motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her
Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch,
own movements as she makes them, and that, generally,
this association was extended, if only partially, to another
in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way.
strand of anti-cognitivist or post-representationalist
Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in
cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive sciterms of the I can that is, oriented towards certain
ence, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology.
projects based on our capacity and habituality. Youngs
In addition, Merleau-Pontys work has also inuenced rethesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and
searchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the prinambivalent, rather than condent, experienced as an I
ciples of chaos theory.[18]
cannot.
It was through this relationship with Merleau-Pontys
work that cognitive sciences aair with phenomenology
was born, which is represented by a growing number of 4.3 Ecophenomenology
works, including
Ecophenomenology can be described as the pursuit of the
Ron McClamrock's Existenial Cognition: Computa- relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and
tional Minds in the World (1995),
those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).
Andy Clark's Being There (1997),

This engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of

relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, be Naturalizing Phenomenology edited by Petitot et al. cause it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived
(1999),
experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless
Alva No's Action in Perception (2004),
a eld of material relationships between bodies. It is gov Shaun Gallagher's How the Body Shapes the Mind erned exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness phenomenology can
(2005),
overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.[19]
Grammont, Franck Dorothe Legrand, and Pierre
David Abram explains Merleau-Pontys concept of
Livet (eds.) 2010, Naturalizing Intention in Action,
esh (chair) as the mysterious tissue or matrix that
MIT Press 2010 ISBN 978-0-262-01367-3.
underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the per The journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sci- ceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity, and he identies this elemental matrix with the inences.
terdependent web of earthly life.[20] This concept unites
subject and object dialectically as determinations within a
more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls the
4.2 Feminist philosophy
esh, and which Abram refers to variously as the anMerleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and imate earth, the breathing biosphere, or the moreNordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tra- than-human natural world. Yet this is not nature or the

6 NOTES

biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body
by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of
the world that he, or she, experiences. Merleau-Pontys
ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog
within the larger-than-human world also has implications
for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language, indeed
he states that language is the very voice of the trees, the
waves and the forest.[21] Merleau-Ponty himself refers to
that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being
nor the object-being and which in every respect baes
reection. From this primordial being to us, there is no
derivation, nor any break...[22] Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and
published with the half-complete manuscript of The Visible and the Invisible, several make evident that MerleauPonty himself recognized a deep anity between his notion of a primordial esh and a radically transformed
understanding of nature. Hence in November 1960 he
writes: Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the esh,
the mother.[23] And in the last published working note,
written in March 1961, he writes: Nature as the other
side of humanity (as esh, nowise as 'matter').[24]

Bibliography

[7] Lester Embree, Merleau-Pontys Examination of Gestalt

Psychology, Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 10
(1980): pp. 89121.
[8] Maurice Merleau-Ponty - Biography at egs.edu
[9] Lacan, Jacques. The Split between the Eye and the Gaze
(1964).
[10] Thomas Baldwin in Introduction to Merleau-Pontys The
World of Perception (New York: Routledge, 2008): 2.
[11] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Child Psychology and Pedagogy:
The Sorbonne Lectures 1949-1952. Translated by Talia
Welsh. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2010.
[12] Martin Jay, (1986), Marxism and Totality: The Adventures
of a Concept from Lukcs to Habermas, pages 36185.
[13] Martin Jay, (1986), Marxism and Totality: The Adventures
of a Concept from Lukcs to Habermas, page 361.
[14] For recent investigations of this question refer to the following: Nader El-Bizri, A Phenomenological Account of
the Ontological Problem of Space, Existentia MeletaiSophias, Vol. XII, Issue 34 (2002), pp. 345364; see
also the related analysis of space qua depth in: Nader ElBizri, La perception de la profondeur: Alhazen, Berkeley et Merleau-Ponty, Oriens-Occidens: sciences, mathmatiques et philosophie de lantiquit lge classique
(Cahiers du Centre dHistoire des Sciences et des Philosophies Arabes et Mdivales, CNRS), Vol. 5 (2004), pp.
171-184. Check also the connections of this question with
Heideggers accounts of the phenomenon of dwelling in:
Nader El-Bizri, 'Being at Home Among Things: Heideggers Reections on Dwelling', Environment, Space, Place
3 (2011), pp. 4771

The following table gives a selection of Merleau-Pontys

works in French and English translation. A much more
comprehensive bibliography can be found through the
Merleau-Ponty Circle website: Bibliography of Primary
Sources at Merleau-Ponty Circle. URI Department of [15] See: Derek Allan, Art and the Human Adventure, Andr
Malrauxs Theory of Art, Rodopi, 2009.
Philosophy. Retrieved June 11, 2011.

Notes

[1] Lawrence Hass & Dorothea Olkoskwi.

Rereading
Merleau-Ponty: Essays Beyond the Continental-Analytic
Divide. Humanity Books. 2000.

[16] Derek Allan, Art and the Human Adventure: Andr Malrauxs Theory of Art, Rodopi, 2009.
[17] Emmanuel Alloa, Merleau-Ponty, tout un roman,
Le Monde | 23.10.2014 https://www.academia.edu/
9041201/Un_roman_de_jeunesse_de_Merleau-Ponty_
Nord_r%C3%A9cit_de_lArctique_1928_

[2] Martin C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty Vivant, SUNY Press,

1991, p. 63.

[18] Skada, Christine; Walter Freedman (March 1990).

Chaos and the New Science of the Brain. Concepts in
Neuroscience 1: 275285.

[3] Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology,

and the Sciences of Mind, Harvard University Press, 2007,
p. 313.

[19] Charles Brown and Ted Toadvine, (Eds) (2003). EcoPhenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself. Albany: SUNY
Press.

[4] Mark A. Wrathall, Je E. Malpas (eds), Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science - Volume 2, MIT Press, 2000 ,
p. 167.

[20] Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception

and Language in a More-than Human World. Pantheon
Books, New York. p. 66.

[5] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception,

Northwestern University Press, 1964, p. 3.

[21] Abram, D. (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception

and Language in a More-than Human World. Pantheon
Books, New York. p. 65.

[6] Richard L. Lanigan, Speaking and Semiology: Maurice

Merleau-Pontys Phenomenological Theory of Existential
Communication, Walter de Gruyter, 1991, p. 49.

[22] The Concept of Nature, I, Themes from the Lectures at the

Collge de France 1952-1960. Northwestern University
Press. 1970. pp. 6566.

[23] The Visible and the Invisible. Northwestern University

Press. 1968. p. 267.

Popen, Shari, 1995, "Merleau-Ponty Confronts

Postmodernism: A Reply to OLoughlin."

[24] The Visible and the Invisible. Northwestern University

Press. 1968. p. 274.

Merleau-Ponty: Reckoning with the Possibility of

an 'Other.'

The Journal of French Philosophy the online

home of the Bulletin de la Socit Amricaine de
Philosophie de Langue Franaise

References
Abram, D. (1988) Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of
the Earth. Environmental Ethics 10, no. 2 (Summer
1988): 101-20.
Clark, A. 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body,
and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Gallagher, Shaun 2003. How the Body Shapes the
Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
No, A. Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Petitot, J., Varela, F., Pachoud, B. and Roy, J-M.
(eds.). 1999. Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues
in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Xavier Tilliette, Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou la
mesure de l'homme, Seghers, 1970.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. 1991.
The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human
Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.

External links
Quotations related to Maurice Merleau-Ponty at
Wikiquote
Maurice Merleau-Ponty at 18 from the French Government website
English Translations of Merleau-Pontys Work
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Merleau-Ponty by Jack Reynolds

Maurice

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Merleau-Ponty by Bernard Flynn

Maurice

The Merleau-Ponty Circle Association of scholars interested in the works of Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty page at Mythos & Logos
Chiasmi International Studies Concerning the
Thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in English,
French and Italian
OLoughlin, Marjorie, 1995, "Intelligent Bodies and
Ecological Subjectivities: Merleau-Pontys Corrective to Postmodernisms Subjects of Education."

Online Merleau-Ponty Bibliography at PhilPapers.org

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1

Text

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice%20Merleau-Ponty?oldid=643724172 Contributors: Brion VIBBER, TUF-KAT, TUF-KAT, Poor Yorick, Andres, TonyClarke, Giddytrace, Rbellin, Robbot, Fredrik, Diderot, Everyking, DO'Neil,
JillandJack, Andycjp, Phil Sandifer, Esperant, D6, NightMonkey, Simonides, Rich Farmbrough, Martpol, Bender235, Kwamikagami,
Bookofjude, Whosyourjudas, Cmdrjameson, Pearle, Mark Dingemanse, Gary123, Bbsrock, Omphaloscope, Dirac1933, Tedpennings,
Patrice Ltourneau, Jtauber, Velho, Woohookitty, Kzollman, Scjessey, Kam Solusar, Tevatron, David Levy, Koavf, Ligulem, The wub,
FlaBot, Pruneau, Moskvax, Happeningsh, Lilypepper, JYOuyang, Stevenfruitsmaak, Aethralis, YurikBot, RobotE, NTBot, RussBot, Pigman, Krits, Bota47, Cesarsorm, Marquez, Harthacnut, SmackBot, Ldh214, MattieTK, Lestrade, Monty Cantsin, LonesomeDrifter, David
Ludwig, Chris the speller, TimBentley, Josteinn, Bsilverthorn, WikiPedant, Laputan, Byelf2007, Lapaz, Tazmaniacs, Kafkan, MTSbot,
Christian Roess, Peter1c, Lazulilasher, To hell with poverty!, Gregbard, Cydebot, Peterdjones, ST47, Bomzhik, Brobbins, Alharris, Heraldman, Agnaramasi, Escarbot, M cua, D. Webb, Matthew Fennell, Vandymorgan, C. C. Perez, .anacondabot, Magioladitis, Appraiser,
Ling.Nut, Justice for All, Lucaas, Max18well, EagleFan, Businessman332211, JaGa, Shimwell, Mtevfrog, Johnpacklambert, Sophomaniac,
Tikiwont, Johnbod, Binris, Milynchke, Inwind, S, DASonnenfeld, Jvpwiki, Rmih, Jonas Mur, Martinevans123, TXiKiBoT, Tomsega,
Cameralumina, Tedcooke, Profronrowe, Tomasboij, BotMultichill, Platinumbuddha, Arpose, Stephendcole, Corrado7mari, Firstwingman,
Monegasque, Vojvodaen, Calen11, Tradereddy, ClueBot, EoGuy, Nick.s.barnett, Addacat, Alexbot, Herondance, Aleksd, If I was Half Pint,
XLinkBot, Hjsilverman, RogDel, Dubmill, Fyrael, Phcople, Phenomenologique, AnnaFrance, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Pink!Teen, Andreasmperu, Denispir, Citation bot, Augarten10, Xqbot, Ninjaphilosopher, Glenmazis, J04n, Omnipaedista, D'ohBot, CircleAdrian, Chris09j,
Esprit Gamin, Jujutacular, Wilk2695, RjwilmsiBot, WikitanvirBot, Davidjonathanmorris, ZroBot, SporkBot, Albinoni67, Polisher of
Cobwebs, Davemnt, Mjbmrbot, ClueBot NG, PT14danang, Helpful Pixie Bot, Titodutta, AlterBerg, PhnomPencil, Theol11111, Wallpaperit, Factndersonline, ChristianShabo, Bodyphilosopher, Eb7473, Dlandes, Rcalore, Tipasaweb, Kernsters, Tekvern, Depthdiver, NSFralin, Monkbot and Anonymous: 132

9.2

Images

File:CHINTREUIL_-_Le_Boulot_blanc.JPG Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/CHINTREUIL_-_Le_

Boulot_blanc.JPG License: Public domain Contributors: Own work Original artist: PHILDIC
File:Commons-logo.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original
artist: ?
File:Ferdinand_de_Saussure.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Ferdinand_de_Saussure.jpg License:
Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg License: Cc-bysa-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Frans_Hals_-_Portret_van_Ren_Descartes.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Frans_Hals_-_
Portret_van_Ren%C3%A9_Descartes.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Andr Hatala [e.a.] (1997) De eeuw van Rembrandt,
Bruxelles: Crdit communal de Belgique, ISBN 2-908388-32-4. Original artist: After Frans Hals (1582/15831666)
File:Merleau-Ponty{}s_grave.jpeg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Merleau-Ponty%27s_grave.jpeg License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: User:CircleAdrian
File:Portal-puzzle.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Portal-puzzle.svg License: Public domain Contributors: ?
Original artist: ?

9.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0