Phenomenology of Perception

Foreword Taylor Carman Introduction Claude Lefort Preface Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena I. Sensation II. Association and the Projection of Memories III. Attention and Judgment IV. The Phenomenal Field Part 1: The Body 1. The Body as an Object and Mechanistic Physiology 2. The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology 3. The Spatiality of the One's Own Body and Motility 4. The Synthesis of One's Own Body 5. The Body as a Sexed Being 6. Speech and the Body as Expression Part 2: The Perceived World 7. Sensing 8. Space 9. The Thing and the Natural World 10. Others and the Human World Part 3: Being-For-Itself and Being-In-The-World 11. The Cogito 12. Temporality 13. Freedom Original Bibliography. Bibliography of English Translations Cited. Additional Work Cited. Index

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 Ecole Normale Superieure. He completed a Docteur es lettres based on two dissertations, La structure du comportement (1942) and Phenomenologie 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 College de France. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 aged fifty-three, at the height of his career. He is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

"... Donald A. Landes' rendering of Merleau-Ponty's magnum opus is a welcome arrival for both the student and the scholar, especially in the light of the renewed and well-warranted interest in that thinker's work over the last two decades. ... As someone who has given a course on Phenomenology of Perception for several years, I will recommend this book to my future students with enthusiasm." - Timothy Mooney, International Journal of Philosophical Studies "This new translation, which is accurate, sensitive and eloquent, will, I hope, enable the reader to better deal with the inaccuracy, opacity and rigidity which are part of any perception and of any text." - Eran Dorfman, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "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-Ponty's 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 "This book is not to be read as a contribution to a school of philosophy (called Phenomenology), but as one of the classical works of