The phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)

pp. 516-562

in: Herbert Spiegelberg, The phenomenological movement II, Berlin, Springer, 1971

Abstract

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is the author of the first French systematic work which displays the word "phénoménologie" in its main title, the Phénoménologie de la perception. This fact in itself establishes for him an important place in the annals of the Phenomenological Movement. But even apart from that, he has gone further than most other French philosophers, including Sartre, by identifying phenomenology with philosophy as such. This fact would seem to require the inclusion of his entire philosophy in the present account of the French phase. The only circumstance which can free me from such a vast assignment is the relative and, to some extent, intrinsic incompleteness and fluidity of his philosophy at this time.