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RC Series Bundle: Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge Classics)

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Merleau-Ponty's work is nothing less than a classic, one of the great works of philosophy in the 20th century. It should go without saying, then, that this work should be made available in an up-to-date and scholarly translation.
Unfortunately, this is what Routledge has refused to do. Not only does this "new" edition maintain all of the known mistakes and inconsistencies of the original translation (most of which were not corrected when the translation was revised twenty years ago), but it also introduces literally dozens of type-setting errors. In addition to all of the obvious mistakes in punctuation and spelling (e.g., "intelfection" on p. xx; "in a world" instead of "in a word" on p. 129; "deralizes" for "derealizes" on p. 140; "writes" for "writers," p. 163; "Rinswanger" for "Binswanger," note 6, p. 185, and the list goes on and on), you will also encounter such lovely gems as "Bergson's inferiority" (instead of "interiority", p. 67) and "adduction" transformed into "abduction" -- when distinguishing between the two is precisely the point of Merleau-Ponty's discussion (p. 243). In short, an already flawed translation has now been bungled into a bloody mess. If you are reading this book for the first time, you would be well-advised to check the used bookstores for a copy of the earlier edition. If you are trying to use this text with students, lots of luck to you!
It is also worth mentioning that Routledge has again failed to include a translation of Merleau-Ponty's original table of contents in this edition, so that many English readers are still unaware that he provided a detailed outline of the entire text to guide the reader. A translation by Daniel Guerriere is available in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 10, no. 1 (1979) - although, of course, the page numbers no longer correspond to this "new" edition.

Well, not narrowly on the philosophy of mind; that'd be an analytic-biased description (and one that leaves out all the things such people may extraneous and annoying in this book).

The field of philosophy of mind in Anglophone philosophy has all but ignored Merleau-Ponty's work, much to its disadvantage. Connectionism and dynamic systems theory as applied to the mental are seen as a "new" development, but the Gestalt psychologists and Merleau-Ponty had very much the same ideas long before. And a bunch of other ones, which to Anglophone ears may sound like they're from that other planet which lies across the Channel, but which deserve to be taken seriously.

Warning: this book is HARD to read, all the more so because of cultural differences between analytic and continental philosophers. The translation is also not very good; if you can read French, go for the original. It helps to read other work ABOUT Merleau-Ponty; M.C. Dillon's "Merleau-Ponty's Ontology" is the best book I've found in this regard.

Also, I think it's better to first read the following two things before tackling the book: (a) M-P's "The Primacy of Perception" (the lecture, collected in the book of the same name) for a shorter summary of his goals with the book; (b) the first chapter (and maybe the second, too) of his first book The Structure of Behavior, which discusses in great detail Merleau-Ponty's understanding of Gestalt Psychology (M-P actually refers the reader to this material repeatedly in the first few chapters of the Phenomenology of Perception).

This book can be part of an excellent upper-division course for undergraduates on the method of philosophical description called phenomenology. Particularly in Merleau-Ponty's description of the lived body and of our intersubjective relations there lies such inspiring attention to our own experience that both myself and my students are often left breathless. This book is both philosophy and poetry, and both aspects of this book are clear and well-researched.

Contrary to the unfounded views of one reviewer, I would argue WITH Merleau-Ponty (who says as much in several key places, including his essay "The Philosopher and His Shadow") that Merleau-Ponty's work here is simply an extension of Edmund Husserl's work. Thus, the book fits in nicely after a discussion of some of Husserl's _Cartesian Meditations_ (found in Donn Welton's _Essential Husserl_). Students have also found Merleau-Ponty to be compatible with de Beauvoir and Sartre (both of whom he knew and wrote for and to), Heidegger, and Derrida.

In my most recent course, I have used John Russon's compelling book _Human Experience_ first as a way to show some of the phenomenological themes in Merleau-Ponty's book before getting the students to hunker down and try to pull apart Husserl (who is quite difficult) and then Merleau-Ponty (who is a kind of reward for doing the rigorous discipline of reading Husserl). All in all, this is a book that will surely motivate some students towards graduate school work in Continental philosophy.

While reading this book you get a sense of a man truly on the verge of profound truth. It's a difficult read (the section on time alone will make you wonder if the book is written in English) yet it's importance is still being discovered. More grounded in science than Sartre or Heidegger, MP's work is that of a supremely disciplined thinker, one who builds a case and sees it through a series of arguments supported by actual evidence. (although the evidence is from studies done 50 years ago, it's impressive how much his work still holds up in the face of current cognitive science research)

I have two complaints with the book. One is the translation. While I'm sure MP is a difficult read in any language, the sentence structure is nearly incomprehensible at times. It's hard for me to believe that the best, most accurate translation would leave it so awkward. My second problem is the index. If you ever want to find anything in the book after you read it I suggest you dogear it because the index is a cruel joke.

As someone with almost equally strong backgrounds in neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy I can only applaud M-P's wide-ranging curiosity and knowledge and his refusal to be limited by the artificial boundaries of academic disciplines. His discussion of the phenomenology of perception draws its data and conclusions from many areas--as long as they had something to offer in illuminating and analyzing this important area.

In this regard, I am reminded of the great but insufficiently appreciated philosopher, Samuel Alexander, in his major work, Space, Time, and Deity. Alexander was similarly eclectic, and moved back and forth between deduction, induction, historical argument, and between science and philosophy, without any sense of discontinuity whatever. In other words, he was willing to use whatever worked.

But getting back to M-P, this book stands alone in it's thoroughgoing approach to the phenomenology of perception and in its determination to ground such analysis in the ordinary data of everyday life--much as G.E. Moore attempted to ground his metaphysics in very ordinary, everyday facts. M-P is to be commended for a similar approach and his work is probably the greatest of all of these.

"What is phenomenology? It may seem strange that this question has still to be asked half a century after the first works of Husserl" So says Merleau-Ponty in the opening pages of `Phenomenology of Perception,' perhaps the major work of phenomenology after `Being and Time.' Merleau-Ponty sought, rather brilliantly, to redirect attention to the human body as the locus of our being-in-the-world for phenomenological inquiry. Unfortunately, I am convinced that Merleau-Ponty's efforts to turn the results of his phenomenology into an ethics and a politics are less impressive and important than Heidegger's breathtakingly brilliant attempt to use phenomenology as a means to fundamental ontology. Still, one has to admire Merleau-Ponty's command over biology and the natural sciences. His descriptions of visual illusions and phantom limbs are by now established classics of the field. However, many of his examples are needlessly extensive and dense. Less committed readers should turn to the final chapters of the book, where the majority of his philosophy can be found.

As a side note, Routledge has produced an edition here that is positively replete with typos. Surprising for such a reputable publisher. Most readers will find the carelessness on their behalf extremely irritating.

Merleau-Ponty's masterpiece is really an exquisite piece of writing. I know from an excellent source that there is a new translation coming soon. The French to English translation was done by a French professor, not a philosopher so some of M-P's subtle nuances are lost. Then again, so much is lost in translation anyway. Anyway you slice it, though, it is an excellent read and I recommend it full-heartedly.

Phenomenology of Perception is a feast of mind-candy, a motherlode of useful material to poke around in. I particularly enjoy Merleau-Ponty's meditation on the body and machinery, and how one can in a sense perceive space around objects with which one has a concern (as in driving a car); the machine effectively becomes part of one's subjectivity. Readers often gush about M-P's genius, so I'l spare you and simply suggest that it's worth the time to give this big beautiful book a spin.

The reader may wish to dig deeper into M-P's project. Right. David Michael Levin's 1980 article "Tarthang Tulku and Merleau-Ponty" provides a helpful running commentary on Phenomenology of Perception. Levin argues also that Tarthang Tulku's masterpiece, Time, Space, and Knowledge, pursues M-P's inquiry and method to their logical conclusions, and he finds those conclusions quite satisfactory. While much of Levin's article is a bit overwritten, his analysis is sound and his argument is well-founded, as one would expect from a M-P expert and philosopher of his caliber.

This is an impossible book to review. The magnitude of what Merleau-Ponty takes on and accomplishes in this work is simply astounding. This is truly one of the most brilliant works of philosophy ever written.

Phenomenology of Perception is first and foremost, as the title suggests, a detailed and extremely sophisticated phenomenological analysis of perception. This might seem like a highly technical topic which would only be of interest to specialists working within this very specific field. Nothing could be further from the truth. The implications of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception extend to every single problem and field of philosophy.

Though Merleau-Ponty is primarily interested in a phenomenology of perceptual experience one must never forget that for Merleau-Ponty perception is a part of the living dialectic of the organism (a conclusion Merleau-Ponty reached in The Structure of Behavior). A large part of the book is, therefore, taken up with a phenomenological account of the lived body. Merleau-Ponty critiques mechanistic physiology and classical psychology and attempts to provide a precise phenomenological description of the body's motility, spatiality, sexuality and speech. The lived body provides the foundation for Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analses (in this work at least) of our relations with things and other selves. The lived body usurps the place that was held by the transcendental Ego in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology.

The fact that Merleau-Ponty takes the lived body as the center of analysis, instead of a transcendental Ego, means that there is a positive place for science and scientific experiments in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the lived body and perception relies a great deal on case studies of various pathologies effecting motility, spatiality, body image, and perception. Merleau-Ponty cannot simply attempt, as Husserl does, to trace back our acts of consciousness to a self-evident cogito. The experience of patients who experience a phantom limb, for example, provides universal insights and illuminations relevant to the phenomenology of the lived body and perception which would be inaccessible (at least for most of us) if we were simply to engage in a Husserlian reduction on our own experience. The scientific study of these pathologies provides a positive ground for Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology while for Husserl they would have merely been a hindrance or an unnecessary detour. Merleau-Ponty finds clues to healthy or "normal" perception by studying pathological perception (just as Freud finds clues to the functioning of the healthy psyche through his examination of the pathological which would have remained otherwise inaccessible). Of all the phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty had the most thorough and sophisticated understanding of the sciences that were relevant to his chosen problem and it shows on every page of this work.

So far my review has focused on the narrow, and more technical aspects of this work. Merleau-Ponty believes, however, that his existential phenomenology of the lived body provides a ground from which to attack the perennial problems of philosophy (problems relating to time, freedom, being, history, and truth to name just a few). Philosophy tends to work itself into insoluble difficulties by taking an objective, God's eye view of problems. We ask, for example, what is the nature of time? Or, are human beings free? And in our attempts to answer these questions we adopt an objective viewpoint which precludes their ever being solved. Objective thought leads to insoluble antinomies. Merleau-Ponty believes that these problems can be solved, or at least clarified, if we instead begin from the point of view of the lived body. Rather then asking: what is time? He will ask: how is time lived? Or: how does time appear to us? what are its various modalities? what is the temporality of the lived body? Rather then ask: are human beings, as part of the objective world, free? He will attempt to provide a phenomenological description of freedom (and in doing so he provides a brilliant critique of Sartre's notion of freedom). Merleau-Ponty also attempts to elucidate the genesis of "eternal truths" (or what have been taken as eternal truths. 'Eternal' being a modality of temporality for Merleau-Ponty) and in so doing he provides the possibility of elucidating the relation between logos and Being a problem that goes all the way back to Plato and his notion of the Forms and participation.

In my opinion the most enduring aspect of Merleau-Ponty's work is his utter destruction of the ontology of res extensa and res cogitans which has its origins in Descartes. This project begins with The Structure of Behavior and culminates in The Visible and the Invisible but the Phenomenology of Perception is an important intermediate point between the two. Descartes has been a perennial punching back for Continental and post-modern philosophers, despite the giant debt that many of them (especially phenomenologists) owe to Descartes. Merleau-Ponty's critiques of Descartes are some of the most brilliant and substantive largely because Merleau-Ponty understood Descartes's philosophy with the depth of a true scholar. Descartes famously proclaimed that it was the soul that sees and not the eyes thereby replacing, in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, actual perception with the thought of perception. The Phenomenology of Perception provides a sustained and brilliant critique of Descartes on this point and in so doing transforms our understanding of the subject.

I have provided merely the barest outline of a few of the themes of this work. Ultimately no summary could do this work justice. There is an enlightening insight on every page of this work which is rare for philosophy books (even really good ones). No one who is seriously interested in philosophy can afford to miss this work, although, I should point out that it would be ideal to have at least some familiarity with phenomenology, and the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in particular, before trying to read this work. This is not an easy book and without that background it would be close to impossible to understand.

P.S. A number of reviewers have pointed to the existence of typos and other typographical errors in the text. There are quite a few typos in the text but there was never a time when any of them got in the way of understanding what was being said. So do not let a few typos stand in your way. It would be a shame to let such minor problems stand in the way of reading one of the most brilliant and important works of philosophy ever written!

P.S.S. For anyone who is interested in helpful secondaries on Merleau-Ponty which will make the reading of this work more intelligible here is a list of the works I have found helpful. It is incomplete but should be a start: Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy (Studies in Continental Thought) by Lawrence Hass, Merleau-Ponty's Ontology, 2nd Edition by M.C. Dillon, Phenomenology Of Merleau Ponty: A Search For The Limits Of Consciousness (Series In Continental Thought) by Gary Madison, Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) by Ted Toadvine, and The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty's Ontology (Studies in Continental Thought) by Renaud Barbaras. All of these books are truly excellent and I have listed them (roughly) in order of difficulty. Good luck!

-Brian

This book is a beautiful bridge for those who still adhere to the cartesian gap theory. seating the phenomenal experience of man in and through 'body'...Merleau-Ponty opens the narrow lens of 'mental' perception to include 'the human'. An important work for our evolutionary reach forward.