Phenomenology of Perception

by Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2012)

Abstract

Published fifty years after the original translation by Colin Smith, Donald A. Landes' rendering of Merleau-Ponty's magnum opus is a welcome arrival for both the student and the scholar. Phenomenology of Perception (French: Phénoménologie de la perception) is a 1945 book about perception by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which the author expounds his thesis of "the primacy of perception". The work established Merleau-Ponty as the pre-eminent philosopher of the body, and is considered a major statement of French existentialism.

Key Passage

I am situated socially, and my freedom, even if it has the power to commit me elsewhere, does not have the power to turn me immediately into what I decide to be. Thus, being bourgeois or a worker is not merely being conscious of so being, it is to give myself the value of a worker or a bourgeois through an implicit or existential project that merges with our way of articulating the world and of coexisting with others. My decision takes up a spontaneous sense of my life that it can confirm or deny, but that it cannot annul. (p.473)

Keywords

Merleau-Ponty, Perception, Phenomenology, French, French Existentialism, Existentialism

Themes

Merleau-Ponty Citations

Links to Reference

• https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2012.714262
• http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2012.714262
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09672559.2012.714262?casa_token=84_YYKFWQ9gAAAAA:e_HwWb1Lay1kePZ1ZkUG_EQI2x-Fl9iD935FMSMV1h8S1rceIzYfj4TUS91EfKiy_2C6wzFSAF4

Citation

Share

How to contribute.