That Maurice Merleau-Ponty derived important inspirations from Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms for his theory of perception is obviously, yet is has so far hardly been studied systematically. This paper attempts to fill this gap, and develops the thesis that Merleau-Ponty's readings mistook in part the potential in Cassirer's theory of the subject and by no means exhausted it.

A fact ignored or underestimated by most of the specialist of the work and thought of Merleau-Ponty is the debt h is phenomenology of perception has to Ernst Cassirer’s own phenomenology. The articulation of an actual dialogue between the two thinkers is here anchored in Cassirer’s _concept of symbolic pregnance; which will have further development in Merleau’s Phenomenology of Perception, especially in the chapter he dedicated to the concept of expression. The elements of a possible discussion between the two concepts (...) are here presented as a fruitful basis to renew the reflection on the Lebenswelt problematic. (shrink)