Phenomenology of Perception - Hardcover

M. Merleau-Ponty

4.17

6,070 ratings by Goodreads

9788120813465: Phenomenology of Perception

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8120813464 ISBN 13: 9788120813465

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass, 1996

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These are the codified thoughts that allowed Maurice Merleau-Ponty the opportunity to establish himself as a first rate philosopher. The world of philosophy has neglected the body for centuries, if not millennia, Phenomenology of Perception brings the most central part of our world back into the way we think about it. He crashed onto the scene and burned some of the most darling philosophical landmarks of his forebears in effigy. This book is generally held to be a decisive example of existentialism, particularly existentialist work in the French fashion, although there is far more than the vague imagined scent of a galloise on the pages. Existentialism is far from the only influence on the work. The discerning reader will see echoes of Plato's forms in Merleau-Ponty's essences and even an implicit critique of the idea.

For the philosopher en chaise, the daring criticism of even Cartesian doubt is thrilling; it feels like jumping on the bed while Socrates isn't looking. Merleau-Ponty utterly rejects the mind-body duality put forward by so many of the giants of our philosophical ancestry in favour of an argument which emphasises the instrumental aspects of consciousness and our full and visceral habitation of our flesh. Gnaw on the questions that he will raise in your mind about whether huge assumptions have been made about the nature of consciousness and how that links to our physical selves.

If only for a moment, throw your perceived certainties aside and engage with the idea that your very consciousness may not be what you think.

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Review:

'Merleau-Ponty was one of the most substantial French philosophers of the twentieth century.' - Times Literary Supplement

About the Author:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, France. Drawn to philosophy from a young age, Merleau-Ponty would go on to study alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil at the famous �cole Normale Sup�rieure. He completed a Docteur �s lettres based on two dissertations, La structure du comportement (1942) and Ph�nom�nologie de la perception (1945). After a brief post at the University of Lyon, Merleau-Ponty returned to Paris in 1949 when he was awarded the Chair of Psychology and Pedagogy at the Sorbonne. In 1952 he became the youngest philosopher ever appointed to the prestigious Chair of Philosophy at the Coll�ge de France. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 aged fifty-three, at the height of his career. He is buried in P�re Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

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