The Self According

to Maurice
Merleau-Ponty
AVILES, CHUA, DINI-AY, SOLAIMAN
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- French philosopher and public intellectual
- Born on March 14, 1908, in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-
Maritime, France
- He went to Paris with his family after his father, a colonial
artillery captain and a knight of the Legion of Honor, died in 1913.
- attended the Parisian lycees Janson-de-Sailly and Louis-le-
Grand for secondary education, earning his first course in
philosophy with Gustave Rodrigues at Janson-de-Sailly in 1923–
1924, and received the school's "Award for Outstanding
Achievement" in philosophy.
- In 1924–1925, he was also given the "First Prize in Philosophy''
at Louis-le-Grand.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- From 1926 to 1930, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure
- Merleau-Ponty authored a novel under the pseudonym 'Jacques
Heller'
- Awarded the second-highest agrégation in philosophy in 1930
- Began his career as a teacher at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–
1933)
- He taught at the Lycée de Chartres from 1934 until 1935.
- Two major books: La structure du comportement (1942) and
Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).
- He was on the frontlines in the French army in the summer of
1939, and received the Croix de Guerre for demonstrating valor
in battle
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and co-
founded "Under the Boot," an underground resistance
organization with Jean-Paul Sartre.
- Took part in an armed demonstration against the Nazis
- Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at
the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952 after teaching at the University
of Lyon
- Held the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from
1952 to 1961
- Served as political editor of the socialist publication Les Temps
Modernes from its inception in October 1945 until December
1952.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
- Laid out an argument defending the Soviet show trials and
violence for progressive causes in an article "Humanism and Terror"
- Repudiated his former support for political violence, denounced
Marxism, and championed a liberal-left perspective in the article
Adventures of the Dialectic
- Because of this, his friendship with Sartre and work with Les
Temps Modernes came to an end
- Merleau-Ponty died of a stroke in 1961, at the age of 53,
leaving an unfinished manuscript, which was published
posthumously in 1964 by Claude Lefort, along with a selection
of Merleau-working Ponty's notes, as The Visible and the
Invisible.
Significant Contributions

"Self is an embodied subjectivity"

Self and perception are encompassed in a physical body; the physical

body is a part of the self.

Everything that we are aware of is contained within our own consciousness

Important Concepts
Dismisses the Cartesian Dualism of Rene Descartes

Mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one
another

Video Clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEUzQ7yL9A0
Important Concepts

Two notions of the body: the subjective body and the objective body

“I can, with my left hand, feel my right hand as it touches an object, the right
hand as an object is not the right hand as it touches: the first is a system of bones,
muscles, and flesh brought down at a point of space, the second shoots through
space like a rocket to reveal the external object in its place. In so far as it sees or
touches the world, my body can therefore be neither seen nor touched.”
Some Quotations

"We know not through our intellect but

through our experience."
Some Quotations
"The perception of other people and the intersubjective world is
problematic only for adults. The child lives in a world which he
unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. He has no
awares of himself or of others as private subjectives, nor does he
suspect that all of us, himself included, are limited to one certain
point of view of the world. That is why he subjects neither his
thoughts, in which he believes as they present themselves, to any
sort of criticism. He has no knowledge of points of view.
For him men are empty heads turned towards one
single, self-evident world where everything takes place,
even dreams, which are, he thinks, in his room, and
even thinking, since it is not distinct from words."
Some Quotations

"I will never know how you see red and you
will never know how I see it. But this
separation of consciousness is recognized
only after a failure of communication, and our
first movement is to believe in an undivided
being between us."
Thank You!