'Painting does not imitate the world, but is a world of its own.'In 1948, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote and delivered on French radio a series of seven lectures on the theme of perception. Translated here into English for the first time, they offer a lucid and concise insight into one of the great philosophical minds of the twentieth-century.These lectures explore themes central not only to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy but phenomenology as a whole. He begins by rejecting the idea - inherited from Descartes and influential within science - that perception is unreliable and prone to distort the world around us. Merleau-Ponty instead argues that perception is inseparable from our senses and it is how we make sense of the world. Merleau-Ponty explores this guiding theme through a brilliant series of reflections on science, space, our relationships with others, animal life and art. Throughout, he argues that perception is never something learned and then applied to the world. As creatures with embodied minds, he reminds us that we are born perceiving and share with other animals and infants a state of constant, raw, unpredictable contact with the world. He provides vivid examples with the help of Kafka, animal behaviour and above all modern art, particularly the work of Cezanne.A thought-provoking and crystalline exploration of consciousness and the senses, The World of Perception is essential reading for anyone interested in the work of Merleau-Ponty, twentieth-century philosophy and art.

Merleau-Ponty was a pivotal figure in twentieth century French philosophy. He was responsible for bringing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers - Husserl and Heidegger - to France and instigated a new wave of interest in this approach. His influence extended well beyond the boundaries of philosophy and can be seen in theories of politics, psychology, art and language.This is the first volume to bring together a comprehensive selection of Merleau-Ponty's writing. Sections from the following are included:The Primacy of PerceptionThe Structure of BehaviourThe Phenomenology of PerceptionThe Prose of the WorldThe Visible and the InvisibleSense and Non-SenseThe Adventures of the DialecticIn a substantial critical introduction Thomas Baldwin provides a critical discussion of the main themes of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, connecting it to subsequent philosophical debates and setting it in the context of the ideas of Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. Each text is also prefaced with an explanation which sets it in its context in Merleau-Ponty's work; and there are extensive suggestions for further reading to enable students to pursue the issues raised by Merleau-Ponty. Thus the book provides the ideal materials for students studying Merleau-Ponty for the first time.

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Product Description: Combining Maurice Merleau-Ponty's 1960 course notes on Edmund Husserl's "The Origin of Geometry," his course summary, related texts, and critical essays, this collection offers a unique and welcome glimpse into both Merleau-Ponty's nuanced reading of Husserl's famed late writings and his persistent effort to track the very genesis of truth through the incarnate idealization of language...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, Phenomenology of Perception is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence.

Product Description: Olafur Eliasson belongs to the generation of artists who spent the 90s exploring and expanding the boundaries between art, science, and nature, and their subjective and objective perception. Using fog, water, plants, and soil, he and landscape architect Gunther Vogt completely transformed the rigorously concrete and glass Kunsthaus Bregenz, pictured here in objective installation photographs and subjective texts by the artist...read more

Product Description: Raymond Aron called Merleau-Ponty "the most influential French philosopher of his generation." First published in France in 1947, Humanism and Terror was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two ideological armed camps...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Les noms de Malebranche, Biran et Bergson s'etant rencontres au programme de l'agregation de philosophie en 1947-48, Merleau-Ponty consacra deux cours paralleles a l'ENS d'Ulm et a la Faculte des Lettres de Lyon a l'union de l'ame et du corps chez ces trois philosophes...read more

Original writings by Merleau-Ponty available only in this volume, including interviews, dialogues, and important texts, reflecting the variety of his thoughts from 1933 to 1960. This second edition includes an expanded bibliography by and on Merleau-Ponty.

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Product Description: A collection of the writings and dialogues of the important French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Includes essays such as "Being and Having" and "The Philosophy of Existence."

The tools, concepts, and vocabulary of phenomenology are used in this book to explore language in a multitude of contexts.

Product Description: First published in France In 1947, Merleau-Ponty's essay was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's novel, Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two armed camps...read more

Product Description: "Speech is a way of tearing out a meaning from an undivided whole."Thus does Maurice Merleau-Ponty describe speech in this collection of his important writings on the philosophy of expression, composed during the last decade of his life...read more