Maurice Merleau-Ponty

27 Mar, 2025 140 Philosophical schools of thought

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, his popularity has increased among philosophers in recent years. Merleau-Ponty rejected Rene Descartes’ division between body and mind, arguing that the way we perceive the world around us cannot be separated from our experience of inhabiting a physical body. Merleau-Ponty was interested in the down-to-earth question of what it is actually like to live in the world. While performing actions as simple as brushing our teeth or patting a dog, we shape the world and, in turn, the world shapes us.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Komarine Romdenh-Romluc No other episodes
    Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
  • Thomas Baldwin No other episodes
    Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of York
  • Timothy Mooney No other episodes
    Associate Professor of Philosophy at University College, Dublin

Reading list

  • Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Knowledge
    Peter Antich (Ohio University Press, 2021) Google Books →
  • Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Language
    Dimitris Apostolopoulos (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) Google Books →
  • At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails
    Sarah Bakewell (Chatto and Windus, 2016) Google Books →
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings
    Thomas Baldwin (ed.) (Routledge, 2004)
  • Reading Merleau-Ponty
    Thomas Baldwin (ed.) (Routledge, 2007) Google Books →
  • The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty's Ontology
    Renaud Barbaras (trans. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor) (Indiana University Press, 2004) Google Books →
  • Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity
    Anya Daly (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Google Books →
  • Merleau-Ponty's Ontology
    M. C. Dillon (Northwestern University Press, 1998) Google Books →
  • The Structure of Behavior
    Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Alden L. Fisher) (Beacon Press, 1976) Google Books →
  • Phenomenology of Perception
    Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Donald Landes) (Routledge, 2011) Google Books →
  • Sense and Non-Sense
    Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Northwestern University Press, 1964) Google Books →
  • Signs
    Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Northwestern University Press, 1964) Google Books →
  • The Visible and the Invisible
    Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Northwestern University Press, 1968) Google Books →
  • The World of Perception
    Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Oliver Davis with an introduction by Thomas Baldwin) (Routledge, 2008) Google Books →
  • Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism
    Ariane Mildenberg (ed.) (Bloomsbury, 2019) Google Books →
  • Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: On the Body Informed
    Timothy Mooney (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Google Books →
  • Starting with Merleau-Ponty
    Katherine J. Morris (Continuum, 2012) Google Books →
  • Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception
    Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (Routledge, 2011) Google Books →
  • The Routledge Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
    Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (Routledge, 2011)
  • Situations
    Jean-Paul Sartre (trans. Benita Eisler) (Hamish Hamilton, 1965) Google Books →
  • The Girl from the Fiction Department
    Hilary Spurling (Penguin, 2003) Google Books →
  • The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty
    Jon Stewart (ed.) (Northwestern University Press, 1998) Google Books →
  • Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Nature
    Ted Toadvine (Northwestern University Press, 2009) Google Books →
  • Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of an Existential Politics
    Kerry Whiteside (Princeton University Press, 1988) Google Books →
  • On Female Body Experience: "Throwing Like a Girl" and Other Essays
    Iris Marion Young (Oxford University Press, 2005) Google Books →

Related episodes

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

Programme ID: m002974s

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002974s

Auto-category: 142.7 (Phenomenology)