Topic Title: Philosophical View, Maurice Merleau - Ponty

Presenter/s name: Maria Isabel T. Gako, Aiza Rose C. Narciso

Topic content keywords: existentialism, life, works, human existence, phenomenological

movement

I. Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau - Ponty, a French Philosopher and phenomenologist, was born on March

14th 1908. In 1930, he completed his philosophy education at the Ecole Normale Superieure, and

soon became one of the period 's leading French philosophers, during and immediately after

World War II, where he also served in infantry.

II. Philosophy 

 Philosophy of the Body

o The body is the center of perceptions and medium of consciousness.

o I live in my body.” By the “lived body,”

o “I do not experience my body as an object in space – rather, I inhabit my body, I

act through my body, I encounter the world through my body.”

o “My body has knowledge.”

o “The world which I experience is a public world, not a private representation

inside my mind.”

 Phenomenology of Perception 

o First French systematic work which displays the word "pMnomenologie" in its

main title, the Phenomenologie de la perception

o Greatly influenced by the work of Edmund Husserl - principal founder of

phenomenology
 o Merleau - Ponty argues that both traditional empiricism and rationalism are

inadequate to describe the Phenomenology of Perception 

 Phenomenology

o is the study of essences, including the study of perception and of consciousness.

o concerned in describing human experience

 Perception

o is the context of experiences that drives every conscious action. 

o is a system of meanings that recognized a phenomenal object

o focused by attention

 Consciousness 

o includes sensing and reasoning

o assigns meaning to the world

 Structure of Behavior 

o unite modern psychological theory, the phenomenology of Husserl, and the

existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre

o suggests an original interpretation of the relationship between "consciousness"

and "nature," 

III. His Death 

Merleau - Ponty died because of a heart attack leaving an unfinished manuscript which

was posthumously published by his friend and former student, Claude Lefort.

 
Bibliography

Maurice Merleau-Ponty. (2020). Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maurice-Merleau-Ponty
Reynolds, J. (n.d). Maurice Merleau  - Ponty. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN  2161-

0002. Retrieved from https://iep.utm.edu/merleau/#SH2b/ Zavala, C., Lahav, R.

(n.d.). The Self. The Philo-Practice Agora 2014. Retrieved from

https://www.philopractice.org/web/self/

The Self Is Embodied Subjectivity: Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. (n.d.) Retrieved from3.11 The

Self Is Embodied Subjectivity: Husserl and Merleau-Ponty

Toadvine, T. (2019). Maurice Merleau - Ponty. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/merleau-ponty/