Maurice Merleau-Ponty §

Group: 4 #group-4

Relations §

• Chiasm: The chiasm is a key concept in Merleau-Ponty’s later work, referring to the intertwining or crossing-over of different elements of experience.
• Visible and Invisible: Merleau-Ponty’s final work, The Visible and the Invisible, explored the interplay between what is visible and what remains invisible in our experience.
• Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty argued for the primacy of perception, or the idea that perception is the foundation of all knowledge and experience.
• Lived Experience: Merleau-Ponty emphasized the importance of studying human experience as it is lived, rather than through abstract theoretical constructs.
• Body-Subject: The body-subject refers to Merleau-Ponty’s view of the body as the subject of perception, rather than an object separate from the mind.
• Intersubjectivity: He explored the idea of intersubjectivity, or how our subjective experiences are shaped by our interactions with others.
• Phenomenology: Merleau-Ponty was a key figure in the phenomenological movement, which emphasizes the study of lived experience.
• Perception: Perception was a central theme in Merleau-Ponty’s work, as he sought to understand the primacy of our perceptual experience of the world.
• Lived Body: The lived body, or the body as it is experienced from within, was a central focus of Merleau-Ponty’s work.
• Embodied Cognition: His work laid the groundwork for the embodied cognition approach, which views the mind as shaped by the body’s interactions with the world.
• Depth: Depth was an important concept for Merleau-Ponty, referring to the multi-layered nature of perceptual experience.
• Ambiguity: Merleau-Ponty saw ambiguity as a fundamental aspect of human experience, rejecting the idea of clear-cut distinctions.
• Intentionality: Merleau-Ponty explored the idea of intentionality, or the directedness of consciousness towards objects and experiences.
• Flesh: The concept of ‘flesh’ was central to Merleau-Ponty’s later work, referring to the intertwining of self, body, and world.
• Existentialism: While not an existentialist per se, Merleau-Ponty’s ideas on embodiment and lived experience influenced existentialist thinkers.
• Être-au-monde: Être-au-monde, or ‘being-in-the-world,’ refers to Merleau-Ponty’s view of human existence as fundamentally embedded in and shaped by the world.
• Reversibility: Reversibility refers to the idea that perception involves a constant interplay between the perceiver and the perceived.
• Phenomenology: Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed a phenomenology of perception, emphasizing the embodied nature of human experience.
• Phenomenal Field: The phenomenal field refers to the totality of our perceptual experience at any given moment.
• Phenomenology: Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception emphasized the embodied nature of human experience.
• Gestalt Theory: Merleau-Ponty drew on Gestalt psychology’s ideas about the holistic nature of perception.