The World of Perception
Routledge (2009)
| Abstract | "Painting does not imitate the world, but is a world of its own." In 1948, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote and delivered on French radio a series of seven lectures on the theme of perception. Translated here into English for the first time, they offer a lucid and concise insight into one of the great philosophical minds of the twentieth-century. The lectures explore themes central not only to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy but to phenomenology as a whole. He begins by rejecting the idea - inherited from Descartes and influential within science - that perception is unreliable, prone to distort the world around us. Merleau-Ponty instead argues that perception is inseparable from our senses and it is how we make sense of the world. Merleau-Ponty explores this guiding theme through a brilliant series of reflections on science, space, our relationships with others, animal life and art. Throughout, he argues that perception is never something learned and then applied to the world. As creatures with embodied minds, he reminds us that we are born perceiving and share with other animals and infants a state of constant, raw, unpredictable contact with the world. He provides vivid examples with the help of Kafka, animal behavior and above all modern art, particularly the work of Cezanne. A thought-provoking and crystalline exploration of consciousness and the senses, The World of Perception is essential reading for anyone interested in the work of Merleau-Ponty, twentieth-century philosophy and art | |||||||||
| Keywords | Perception (Philosophy Phenomenology | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Buy the book | $19.95 direct from Amazon (10% off) Amazon page | |||||||||
| Call number | B2430.M3763.C3813 2009 | |||||||||
| ISBN(s) | 0415773814 041531271X 9780415312714 | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,875 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesTaylor Carman (2009). Merleau-Ponty and the Mystery of Perception. Philosophy Compass 4 (4):630-638.
Taylor Carman & Mark B. N. Hansen (eds.) (2005). The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty. Cambridge University Press.
David Morris (2004). The Sense of Space. State University of New York Press.
Stephen Priest (1998). Merleau-Ponty. Routledge.
Dorothea Olkowski (2010). In Search of Lost Time, Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the Time of Objects. Continental Philosophy Review 43 (4):525-544.
Anthony J. Steinbock (1987). Merleau-Ponty's Concept of Depth. Philosophy Today 31:336-351.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads25 ( #50,423 of 556,840 )Recent downloads (6 months)2 ( #39,122 of 556,840 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
