The Primacy Of Perception

Selected essays of Maurice Merleau-Ponty published from 1947 to 1961.

Buddhist philosophy of Anicca (impermanence), Dukkha (suffering), and

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notion of motivation advances a compelling alternative to the empiricist and rationalist assumptions that underpin modern epistemology. Arguing that knowledge is ultimately founded in perceptual experience, Peter Antich interprets and defends Merleau-Ponty’s thinking on motivation as the key to establishing a new form of epistemic grounding. Upending the classical dichotomy between reason and natural causality, justification and explanation, Antich shows how this epistemic ground enables Merleau-Ponty to offer a radically new account of knowledge and its relation to perception. In so doing, Antich demonstrates how and why Merleau-Ponty remains a vital resource for today’s epistemologists.

'In simple prose Merleau-Ponty touches on his principle themes. He speaks about the body and the world, the coexistence of space and things, the unfortunate optimism of science – and also the insidious stickiness of honey, and the mystery of anger.' - James Elkins Maurice Merleau-Ponty was one of the most important thinkers of the post-war era. Central to his thought was the idea that human understanding comes from our bodily experience of the world that we perceive: a deceptively simple argument, perhaps, but one that he felt had to be made in the wake of attacks from contemporary science and the philosophy of Descartes on the reliability of human perception. From this starting point, Merleau-Ponty presented these seven lectures on The World of Perception to French radio listeners in 1948. Available in a paperback English translation for the first time in the Routledge Classics series to mark the centenary of Merleau-Ponty’s birth, this is a dazzling and accessible guide to a whole universe of experience, from the pursuit of scientific knowledge, through the psychic life of animals to the glories of the art of Paul Cézanne.

The book is the result of my preoccupation with the phe nomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl during my years of post-doctoral studies (approximately since 1960). As the titles of the chapters may suggest, I have dealt with a number of topics relating to Husserlian Phenomenology - themes which are relatively independent but not disconnected. For I have been prone to look upon this movement as presenting more an organic outlook of its own, inspite of its diversity of phases, than as offering certain answers to individual philosophical problems. Accordingly my aim here has been to interpret the meaning and significance of this outlook in its logical, epistemological and metaphysical aspects. In writing these chapters I have been aware of the fact that the phenomenological movement as such still represents some thing of a heterodoxy in the world of Anglo-American philosophy to-day. Yet the points of contact between the two are not far fetched. In treating the problems from the phenomenological point of view, I have often taken into account the views of the empirical-analytical school in general. It should be clear that instead of confining myself to a bare exposition of the different aspects of Husserlian Phenomenology, I have taken some freedom in interpreting its point of view.

This is the first volume to bring together a comprehensive selection of Merleau-Ponty's writing. It presents a cross-section of his work that clearly shows the historical progression of his ideas and influence.

1 The present volume is rich in essential phenomenological descriptions 2 and insightful historico-critical analyses, some of which cannot be fully appreciated, however, except by close examination on the part of the reader. Accordingly, such a task ought to be left to the consideration and judgment of the latter, save where such discussions are directly relevant to the topics I will be dwelling upon. I prefer, then, to approach the matters and questions contained here otherwise, namely, archeologically. In this I 3 follow Jose ́ Huertas-Jourda, the editor of the corresponding French vol- 4 ume, in his felicitous terminological choice, although I adopt it here for my purposes in an etymological sense, i. e. , as signifying a return to prin- 5 ciples or origins. This, after all, is consistent not only with the spirit and practice of phenomenology, as acknowledged by Aron Gurwitsch often enough, but as well with what he has actually said, to wit: it is a qu- tion of 1 Cf. , e. g. , infra,in An Outline of Constitutive Phenomenology, Chapter 4, pp. 185 ff. (Henceforth I shall refer to this book as Outline. ) This essay will be devoted to the study of selected parts of the contents of this volume, although, when necessary, use will be made here of other works by various authors, including Gurwitsch. 2 Cf. , e. g. , ibid. , Chapter 3, pp. 107 ff.

In this volume leading philosophers examine the nature and extent of Merleau-Ponty's achievement in Phenomenology of Perception and related writings.