Merleau-Ponty Maurice - Phenomenology of Perception

First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Pontys monumental Phnomnologie de la perception signaled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers.

Phenomenology of Perception stands in the great phenomenological tradition of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Pontys contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course between the reductionism of science on the one hand and intellectualism on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures ones situation and experience within the world.

Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome, synesthesia, and hallucination.

This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Mer-leau-Pontys discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translators Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Pontys references to now available English translations.

Also included is a new Foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to Merleau-Ponty by Claude Lefort.

Translated by Donald A. Landes.

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 Suprieure. He completed a Docteur s lettres based on two dissertations, La structure du comportement (1942) and Phnomnologie 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 Collge de France. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 aged fifty-three, at the height of his career. He is buried in Pre Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Praise for this new edition:

This is an extraordinary accomplishment that will doubtless produce new readers for the remarkable philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. This excellent translation opens up a new set of understandings of what Merleau-Ponty meant in his descriptions of the body, psychology, and the field of perception, and in this way promises to alter the horizon of Merleau-Ponty studies in the English language. The extensive index, the thoughtful annotation, and the guidance given about key problems of translation not only show us the richness of Merleau-Pontys language, but track the emergence of a new philosophical vocabulary. This translation gives us the text anew and will doubtless spur thoughtful new readings in English.

Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley, USA

This lucid and compelling new translation not only brings one of the great breakthrough books in phenomenology back to life it gives to it an entirely new life. Readers will here find original insights on perception and the lived body that will change forever their understanding of themselves and the world they inhabit.

Edward S. Casey, Stony Brook University, USA

Review of the original French edition:

It is impossible to define an object in cutting it off from the subject through which and for which it is an object; and the subject reveals itself only through the objects in which it is engaged. Such an affirmation only makes the content of naive experience explicit, but it is rich in consequences. Only in taking it as a basis will one succeed in building an ethics to which man can totally and sincerely adhere. It is therefore of extreme importance to establish it solidly and to give back to man this childish audacity that years of verbal submission have taken away: the audacity to say: I am here. This is why Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty is not only a remarkable specialist work but a book that is of interest to the whole of man and to every man; the human condition is at stake in this book.

Simone de Beauvoir, reviewing Phnomnologie de la perception
on publication in French in 1945

Translated by Donald A. Landes

This edition published 2012

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Phenomenology of Perception, by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, originally published as Phnomnologie de la perception ditions GALLIMARD, Paris, 1945

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by Claude Lefort, originally published in Histoire de la philosophie, III. Du XIXe sicle nos jours, Encyclopdie de la Pliade, 174, pp. 692706 ditions GALLIMARD, Paris, 1974.

English translation 2012 Routledge

Foreword 2012 Taylor Carman

Translators Introduction 2012 Donald A. Landes

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 19081961.

[Phnomnologie de la perception. English]

Phenomenology of perception / by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

p. cm.

Translated by Donald A. Landes.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

1. Phenomenology. 2. Perception (Philosophy) I. Landes, Donald A. II. Title.

B2430.M3763P4713 2011

142.7dc23

2011021920

ISBN: 9780415558693 (hbk)

Typeset in Joanna

By Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon

Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
translated by Donald A. Landes

Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to
Phenomena

Phenomenology of Perception is one of the great texts of twentieth-century philosophy. Today, a half-century after his death, Merleau-Pontys ideas are enjoying a renaissance, attracting the renewed attention of scientists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Philosophers in the English-speaking world have over the last fifty years been slow to recognize the significance of his work, which resists easy classification and summary. He had little familiarity or contact with what by the 1950s had come to be called analytic philosophy, though his ideas speak directly to the theories of perception and mind that have grown out of that tradition. Nor was he a structuralist, though he saw sooner and more deeply than his contemporaries the importance of Saussurian linguistics and the anthropology of Claude Lvi-Strauss, whose good friend he was and remained until his death in 1961.