Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley

More documents

Recommendations

Info

After the publication of Phenomenology of Perception in 1945Merleau-Ponty’s academic career progressed quickly. In 1945he was appointed a Professor at Lyon; in 1950 he becameProfessor of Psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris; and then in1952 he was appointed to the most prestigious position for aFrench philosopher, the chair in philosophy at the Collège deFrance, a position which he held until his unexpected earlydeath in 1961. During this period he published three collectionsof essays: Sense and Non-Sense (1948) which bringstogether his early post-1945 essays, of which most are aboutMarxism and politics; 10 The Adventures of the Dialectic (1955)which deals with his break with Sartre and includes his laterthoughts about ‘Western’ Marxism; 11 finally, Signs (1960)which contains some new philosophical work, mainly on language,together with further political essays. 12 After his deathit became apparent that Merleau-Ponty had been working ona major new monograph. This had originally been intended asa study of language and truth which would develop themesfrom the earlier writings under the title ‘The Origin of Truth’;but as the work progressed Merleau-Ponty found himselfdrawn back to some of the themes concerning perception thathe had addressed in his earlier philosophy, and the manuscriptthat was published posthumously in 1964 bears Merleau-Ponty’s later working title, The Visible and the Invisible. 13 5
After his death Merleau-Ponty’s reputation in Francedeclined quickly as French philosophers turned away fromFrench existential phenomenology to the study of Germanphilosophy, especially to the works of Heidegger and the ‘mastersof suspicion’ – Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Elsewhere,however, and especially in the United States, his former pupilspreserved his reputation and ensured the translation intoEnglish of all his major works. More recently, within the analytictradition, there has been a growth of interest in hiswritings: his discussions of the ‘intentionality’ of consciousness(especially of the ways in which things are presented inperception) and of the role of the body in perception arerecognised as important contributions to the understanding ofthese difficult topics. It is to be hoped that these radio talkswill help to make his ideas available to a wider public here, justas their publication in France in 2002 is evidence of a longoverdue revival of interest there in his work.MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHILOSOPHY:PERCEPTION AND THE BODYMerleau-Ponty sets out his main aim for these lectures at the endof the first paragraph of this first lecture: ‘I shall suggest . . . thatone of the great achievements of modern art and philosophy . . .introduction
Page 5 and 6: First published in French as Causer
Page 8 and 9: ForewordThe seven lectures collecte
Page 10: are preceded by a number. We have e
Page 13 and 14: draws and the anxieties which he ar
Page 15: shortly before the war. This second
Page 19 and 20: empiricism is not of this kind. Thi
Page 21 and 22: The central theme of Merleau-Ponty
Page 23 and 24: acknowledgement of its special stat
Page 25 and 26: world of perception can be dismisse
Page 27 and 28: When Merleau-Ponty says that scienc
Page 29 and 30: Florentine Renaissance, or, in a Fr
Page 31 and 32: photograph in which the feet look a
Page 33 and 34: intrinsic properties which explain
Page 35 and 36: which our own life has been disturb
Page 37 and 38: only contingently connected to a ph
Page 39 and 40: imagining that our dependence upon
Page 41 and 42: Merleau-Ponty now extends this aest
Page 43 and 44: etter conception of reason (e.g. di
Page 46: The World of Perception
Page 50 and 51: The world of perception, or in othe
Page 52 and 53: explain the illusions of long- and
Page 54 and 55: provide all the answers at a time w
Page 56: exercise of a pure and unsituated i
Page 60 and 61: It has often been said that modern
Page 62 and 63: which effect certain changes in the
Page 64 and 65: along lines running from the painte
Page 66 and 67:
In the footsteps of science and pai
Page 68:
LECTURE 3Exploring the World of Per
Page 71 and 72:
worlds of sight, smell, touch and s
Page 73 and 74:
touch. 2 To say that honey is visco
Page 75 and 76:
complexes. This is what Cézanne me
Page 77 and 78:
us and above all in the found objec
Page 80 and 81:
In the first three lectures, we arg
Page 82 and 83:
children and the sick was held back
Page 84 and 85:
person must remain open to these ab
Page 86 and 87:
flow from the centre of the ‘body
Page 88:
delegation to identify this monumen
Page 92 and 93:
Thus far we have tried to look at s
Page 94 and 95:
haunts a body and we seem to see a
Page 96 and 97:
ack to the real experience of anger
Page 98 and 99:
we have received from without and w
Page 100 and 101:
which makes us crave their assent o
Page 102:
LECTURE 6Art and the World of Perce
Page 105 and 106:
world once more, as if in an exchan
Page 107 and 108:
that the painter takes hold of a fr
Page 109 and 110:
do explain why, hitherto, there hav
Page 111 and 112:
looks at the things themselves with
Page 114:
LECTURE 7Classical World, Modern Wo
Page 117 and 118:
In modernity, we have a representat
Page 119 and 120:
Proust himself who raises them. As
Page 121 and 122:
works of intellectuals, then to see
Page 123 and 124:
with a feeling of completion or per
Page 126 and 127:
NotesFOREWORD1 Merleau-Ponty’s te
Page 128 and 129:
20 Although Merleau-Ponty usually t
Page 130 and 131:
6 Sartre, ‘L’Homme et les Chose
Page 132:
5 Paul Valéry, passim. See, for ex
Page 135 and 136:
freedom 27-8Freud 76Galileo 21geome
show all

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?