Embodied Knowledge (original) (raw)
Related papers
Perception as Body: Body as Perception: Reading Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
In his preface of the "Phenomenology of Perception," Merleau-Ponty explicitly claims that "[P]henomenology is accessible only through a phenomenological method." 1 This statement is more than a direction to any discourse made on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Clearly, it is a warning that to understand phenomenology-if understanding could suffice to mean grasping the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty-one has to be acquainted, primordially, with the phenomenological method. The phenomenological method, on the one hand, is made accessible only by a thorough understanding of phenomenology. In a sense, this statement presents a difficulty in entering the world of Merleau-Ponty because of the enigma of whether to know the phenomenological method first in order to understand phenomenology, or to know phenomenology first in order to understand the phenomenological method.
Preface to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: On the Body Informed
2022
Never quite eclipsed by other and more fashionable approaches, the account of engaged awareness set out in Phenomenology of Perception has come back into its own in recent years. The new movements of embodied and situated cognition owe much to it, and their leading proponents have been careful to acknowledge its importance. 1 In his magnum opus Maurice Merleau-Ponty exploits both physiology and psychology in the service of his project. He also draws on the diverse expressions
First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental Phénoménologie de la perception signalled 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. This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations. "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
Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body
Malighetti R. 2005, Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body, in I Quaderni del CREAM, 2005, n° IV. pp.147-160.
Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the body subject arises as a specific problem in the course of a critical exposition of the traditional theories of sense perception. Basically he argues that every theory of perception presupposes a theory of sensuousness, which is itself a theory of the body. On a few occasions he explicitly states that “the body is the subject of perception”. This article reproduces an unpublished paper presented in 1977 at McGill University (reprinted in I Quaderni del CREAM, 2005, n° IV. pp.147-160).
Merleau Ponty: Subjectivity as The Field of Being within Beings
Transmission: Journal of the Awareness Field - Vol. 4 Awareness as Existingness, 2012
In his later life Maurice Merleau Ponty changed his understanding of how human beings know Being and how human beings know phenomena. His mature understanding went far beyond the early phenomenology of Husserl. His understanding and intellectual position about the subjectivity of mind alone with its corresponding subject object duality dissolved into a experience of non duality within appearance. His dualistic understanding about Being changed to the vast nondual awareness of Being as the source of both subjectivity and objectivity. Before his work on the Visible and the Invisible Merleau Ponty's thought was contained by equating subjectivity with mind alone and with object alone. His view was dualistic and the source of knowing was located in mind alone. Mind means the functions of thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and fantasy.