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An Essay on the Communist Problem. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Existentialism is an anti-humanism
Maurice Merleau-Ponty may have been a competent philosopher. Politically, he was - to put it mildly - very misguided indeed. While Martin Heidegger supported the Nazis, Merleau-Ponty became a Communist fellow traveller. Or rather, a very specifically Stalinist one. Maybe this was "understandable" in post-war France, since the French Communist Party had fought the Nazis and entered the democratic provisional government after liberation.

Maybe.

And then, maybe not.

The problem with Merleau-Ponty's book "Humanism and Terror" is that it goes far beyond any legitimate idea about an alliance of all Frenchmen (including Communists) against the Nazi occupation. It also goes further than a simple criticism of Western hypocrisy concerning "democracy" (at the time, France and other Western nations still had colonial empires). No, the comrade philosopher positively embraces and excuses Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union, including the Great Purges and Moscow show trials! He does it with a breathtaking cynicism as well, almost a caricature of the official Communist position.

At least I think that's what he does. "Humanism and Terror", first published in 1947,is written in that inimitable and impenetrable quasi-intellectual style which a certain kind of philosophers seems to love. It's not an easy read. Ostensibly, we are dealing with a series of essays criticizing Arthur Koestler's novel "Darkness at noon". The more "sophisticated" arguments revolving around existentialism and dialectics were lost on me. However, the other arguments sound familiar...

Merleau-Ponty defends the Moscow show trials, and claims that the defendants were guilty. But guilty of what? It's not clear whether he believes that Bukharin actually was a Nazi agent. Occasionally, it sounds that way. But on other pages, Merleau-Ponty seems to support a more sinister position: Bukharin was a good-intentioned critic of Stalin, but this in itself aided the Nazis "objectively" speaking. Since "nobody is wholly innocent" before the tribunal of history, Stalin did the right thing when he had Bukharin shot. Indeed, it seems as if the author criticizes Vyshinsky for wanting to prove that Bukharin was guilty of real acts of sabotage, rather than conducting a purely political trial based on the "objective" danger! Presumably, our philosopher really wants Bukharin to be executed for his *opinions* rather than some concrete acts.

Merleau-Ponty attempts to sugercoat his position by pointing out that there are situations when disinterested opinions are as dangerous as actual acts, that good intentions aren't an excuse if the consequences are bad, and that the Western democracies are hypocrites who base their system on violence. This, admittedly, is quite true. But how on earth does it justify Stalin's regime in Russia? Indeed, the very same arguments could be used to justify Hitler or Vichy! Here, Merleau-Ponty has very little to say, as long as he speaks as an existentialist. After all, the existentialist "ethic" sees life as a risk, where we never know the outcome of our choices, and thus the only thing to do is bravely embrace whatever course of action we deem best, and stand for it in both failure and success. A collaborator in Vichy France might have reasoned in exactly the same way.

To square the circle, Merleau-Ponty must adopt a Marxist perspective, which he does quite explicitly in the second part of his book. Marxism (which he treats as in effect unfalsifiable) has divined the meaning of History. The future belongs to the proletariat and the collective economy. Somehow, this justifies Stalinist violence in the present. Although the author constantly tells us that one cannot *really* divine the future, the whole thing nevertheless comes back to this: sacrificing the present in the name of the future. And since nobody is wholly innocent, what's so special about supporting Stalin anyway? Merleau-Ponty waxes especially ironic when discussing Trotsky, quoting liberally from Trotsky's "Terrorism and Communism" to show that The Old Man wasn't really that different from Stalin. So with what right does *he* complain? (This is the only fun part of the book.)

Naturally, Merleau-Ponty has to accept the Stalinist propaganda without question. The forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture was supposedly necessary to build up an industrial base, without which the Soviet Union would have been easy prey to Nazi Germany. Not a word about the fact that collectivization started before Hitler took power, nor about the sectarianism of the Communist Party in Germany, which may have contributed to Hitler's victory. Not a word about the extensive US aid to the Soviet Union during the war, which showed that Soviet industry left much to be asked for. The author also accepts the lie that the Great Purges rid the USSR of potential collaborators, thereby aiding Soviet victory in the future war. Not a word about Communist "collaboration" during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, or the enormous number of collaborators in the Ukraine, Belarus, Crimea and the Caucasus (Stalin seems to have shot all the wrong people!). I also tend to be a consequentialist in matters ethical, but its precisely the consequences which makes political support and apologias for Stalin's Russia out of the question. Was it right to form an alliance with the Soviet Union during the war? Undoubtedly yes. Was it a tragedy that the great powers couldn't co-operate after the war? Perhaps. But that is something else than Maurice Merleau-Ponty's sycophancy. I never read Koestler's novel, but apparently the main character Rubashov "voluntarily" sacrifices himself for the good of the Party. Somehow, Merleau-Ponty believes that Rubashov did the right thing!

Somebody might argue that our Frenchman simply didn't have access to all the relevant facts. The book, after all, was published in 1947. I disagree. The author seems well versed in the writings of Trotsky and the International Left Opposition, and must have had access to many other critical sources about the Soviet Union as well.

His pimping for Joe Stalin was a conscious one. Existentialism, it seems, is an anti-humanism.

Contra Koestler
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Humanism and Terror" was intended, in 1946, to be an answer from the intellectuals still associated with the 'official' Communists to Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon: A Novel. Merleau-Ponty summarizes the book, addresses the challenge Koestler poses, and attempts to judge the USSR by the standards of "Marxist humanism" as he sees it. Nevertheless, the book is a very mixed bag.

The interesting thing about this book is that the preface, in which Merleau-Ponty does not address Koestler directly but instead deals with the trouble of Communism during the Stalinist period, the attempts to weigh means and ends, the desire for honesty vs the desire for pragmatism, the failure of people to face the dilemmas of history and the lack of seriousness on the part of liberal critics in this, and so on, is the most interesting part. This is all excellently written and clearly set out in unmistakable terms, at least for a Parisian philosopher.

The part of the book which discusses Koestler's thesis, however, is really poor. Merleau-Ponty ascribes to Koestler himself the views that Rubashov and his inquisitors share, namely a sort of Hegelian-mechanistic interpretation of History as the infallible guide of politics, and the risks and destructiveness this implies - but as is clear from an elementary reading of Koestler's book, he himself does not share this view at all, and precisely wrote the book to attack this viewpoint. It is really odd that someone with the philosophical and literary training of Merleau-Ponty does not see this.

In the subsequent discussion of Koestler's problematic itself, namely whether one can support communism but not communist policy, whether one can be a communist outside the Party, whether there can be such a thing as a democratic socialism, whether economic development is a prerequisite of such democratic socialism or not and what sacrifices are valid to achieve it, etc., Merleau-Ponty does not make this error as much. Yet here he makes a different error: especially in the discussion of the Moscow Trials, which take up the middle part of the book, he completely and uncritically adopts the Stalinist line. He believes every word in the 'confessions' of the accused to be actually intended and seriously meant by them (not writing a word about the torture applied before the Trials began), and he also uncritically adopts the Stalinist line that the suppression of all opposition was necessary to defend the USSR against foreign aggression. On the other hand, he clearly does not believe the actual charges themselves, for which there was blatantly no evidence whatever, as he freely admits. For Merleau-Ponty, the question is then reduced to why people like Bukharin and Trotsky would argue for the Party that 'had to' destroy them. An interesting dilemma, but an irrelevant one, since it is by no means necessary to adopt this assumption in the first place. Koestler's book is clearly superior to Merleau-Ponty's in this, since it makes no such assumption.

The last part of the book is the author's attempt to reconstitute the meaning of Marxism and its philosophy of history. Here, he does criticize the USSR quite strongly (for someone with sympathy for socialism in 1946), and his discussion of the merits and demerits of Trotsky's commentaries on this problem is quite good, if meanderingly written. There is still a lot of vague chatter about the dialectic and the proletariat in an abstract philosophical way, but it leads to several quite good points nonetheless, and advocates taking up a position that supports the Revolution of 1917 as well as communism in general, but without being uncritical towards the USSR or any specific form of Communist Parties and the like, and not binding oneself to having to defend it against better reason. He also engages the philosophical analysis undertaken by Koestler in The Yogi and the Commissar and Other Essays, and undertakes some effective and well-considered critiques of Koestler's metaphysical views in it, while admitting Koestler's own critiques as useful and valid, as it should be.

Here Merleau-Ponty concludes with the famous statement: "Marxism is not a philosophy of history; it is _the_ philosophy of history, and to renounce it is to dig the grave of Reason in history. After that there remain only dreams and adventures."
That, at least, is and remains true.

Brilliant flashes but...
This is an amazing document to read in the 21st century.It amounts to a full-throated defense of the Moscow show trials used in the late 1930s by Stalin to purge all his potential rivals from the party and the government (usually by executing them).Specifically, Merleau-Ponty, who was one of the great philosophers of the 20th century, is arguing here contra-Koestler and "Darkness at Noon."Merleau-Ponty is quite right in arguing that liberal societies hide the violence (and terror) that they use to enforce their own order - an argument that come critics of Globalization, such as the outstanding R. Radhakrishnan, have deployed to excellent and edifying effect.However, most of the time, "Humanism and Terror" reads like a document from the inquisition in which the ideological backdrop of demonic possession, witchcraft and satanic heresy are taken at face-value and completely seriously by the author.In other words, it belongs entirely to another era.And of course, Merleau-Ponty`s continuous reliance on the judgement of history would tend to suggest that he and his arguments were "objectively incorrect" while the defendants were "proven right" (assuming, of course, that they were in some sense disloyal to the Soviet state). ... Read more

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Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Utterly brilliant
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 (be sure to check out his other works as well which are equally brilliant!).

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.

Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception is immediately relevant to metaphysics and ontology as his work utterly demolishes the ontology of res extensa and res cogitans which has its origin in Descartes. Much of Continental philosophy is taken up with a critique of the Cartesian subject and this is certainly true of Merleau-Ponty's work as well. Merleau-Ponty's work, however, stands out for its sophistication, as it draws not only on Merleau-Ponty's extremely subtle and sophisticated understanding of the history of philosophy (Descartes, Malebranche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Scheler, Bergson, etc.) but also on Merleau-Ponty's extensive reading in the Gestalt psychologists, physiologists, bioligists, and neuroscientists who were working and writing on these problems at the time. Of all the phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty had the most sophisticated understanding of the sciences that were relevant to his chosen problem and it shows on every page. In other words, he is not simply aware of what other phenomenologists were saying about perception but about what scientific researchers were saying about perception as well.

Merleau-Ponty's work is directly relevant to the mind-body problem as well. His work utterly demolishes (in my opinion) the notion of the Cartesian theater and the representational theory of perception. Anyone still struggling with these problems who is working within the traditional mind-body paradigm and attempting to work out the relationship between `internal representations' and `external reality' is, in my very humble opinion, wasting their time, and needs to read this book before they waste any more.

Merleau-Ponty's analysis of the genesis of "truth" (illustrated through an analysis of the genesis of geometrical truth) is directly relevant to the problem of the relation between ideality and reality (i.e., the problem of universals); a problem that is as old as philosophy itself going all the way back to Plato and his notion of Forms and the obscure meaning he assigns to the notion of participation. Merleau-Ponty further develops these ideas in The Visible and the Invisible which comes about as close to carrying through Nietzsche's project of "overturning Platonism" as anything I have read. Merleau-Ponty's work and his notion of expressive cognition could also, I think, fruitfully be brought into the whole realism/anti-realism debate on this point. His theories of expressive cognition are directly relevant to the problem of the relation between `conceptual theories' and `preconceptual reality'.

Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology also provides a ground for attacking the problems of time and free-will which have plagued philosophers for centuries. These problems cannot be solved, according to Merleau-Ponty, if one begins by adopting a third-person attitude towards them (actually the same can be said for every `philosophical problem' in Merleau-Ponty's opinion). Merleau-Ponty also provides, in the process of elaborating his own position, a nuanced summary and devastating critique of Sartre's notion of freedom as presented in Being and Nothingness in the final chapter of this work. Merleau-Ponty's analysis here will be equally relevant to Marxists who are working on the problems of class consciousness or on the philosophy of history. Merleau-Ponty charts out an interesting position in which the individual is no longer the subject of history while simultaneously avoding the positing of an absolute spirit as the true subject of history a la Hegel. As always Merleau-Ponty's position on this point is extremely subtle and enlightening and seems to me absolutely correct as far as it goes.

So this book is not simply a work written for specialists working in the phenomenology of perception. This work should be read by anyone who is seriously interested in philosophy. I should say that this work will prove extremely difficult, perhaps even unintelligible, for someone without a fairly firm grounding in phenomenology. You should know at least something about Husserl and Heidegger, and what they were up to, before tackling this work. If you already have a basic understanding of phenomenology than you should be set and there is simply no excuse for ignoring this work. Merleau-Ponty belongs among the ranks of Husserl and Heidegger and in my opinion often surpasses them.

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 by Lawrence Hass, Merleau-Ponty's Ontology by M.C. Dillon, The Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty by Gary Madison, and The Being of the Phenomenon by Renaud Barbaras. All of these books are truly excellent and I have listed them (roughly) in ascending order of difficulty. If you can make your way through those works with some degree of understanding (particularly the Barbaras which can be a challenge) you'll be in good shape. Good luck!

-Brian

awesome quality and an awesome, yet challenging read.
Great quality.
Also, The topic is very intriguing and thought provoking...
Very dense text, but very worth the challenge.

Excellent condition, speedy delivery
The book shipped to Toronto Canada within a a week an a half. It is in excellent condition and as described. Thanks a million!!!

Do NOT buy this edition
This is a great work of philosophy that I highly recommend. However, do not by any means buy this Routledge edition.The pages of my copy began to fall out the first day I started reading it.I don't know why Routlege would release classics that are so poorly manufactured that the glue binding can't even hold up to a *single* reading.Total scam.

Phenomenology of Perception- Brilliant, timely, everyone should read.
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. ... Read more

Product Description
Merleau-Ponty was a pivotal figure in twentieth century French philosophy. He was responsible for bringing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers, Husserl and Heidegger, to France and instigated a new wave of interest in this approach. His influence extended well beyond the boundaries of philosophy and can be seen in theories of politics, art and language.

This is the first volume to bring together a comprehensive selection of Merleau-Ponty's writing and presents a cross-section of his work which shows the historical progression of his ideas and influence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A wide ranging intellect
As someone with 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.

Among M-P's many contributions, there was also, as scholar Glen Mazis put it in one of his reviews here, M-P's "...project to shift the ground of philosophy and phenomenology by diving into the depth of the perceptual world and turning to art as a touchstone for a reawakened perceptual experience."

In this regard, I am reminded of the great but insufficiently appreciated philosopher, Samuel Alexander, who wrote in the early 20th century, 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 represents M-P'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 in this book also in his The Phenomenology of Perception.

Flesh Ontology
The working notes of this book are utterly staggering in their implication to ontology. What is being? Merleau answers in the manner of Lao-Tse, and alludes to something like a divine-feminine at the heart of wild perception. It was said by Sartre in his autobiography "Situations" that after Merleau's mother died who was like a "goddess" to him Merleau returned began the project anew. What is intimated in the working notes is invaluable to the true student of philosophy and life.And in the end, Merleau returns to the very object of his study. You can really feel this descent at the book nears its end. It is, however, an ascent of the entirety of the history of philosophy to a new level of comprehension. That I assure you.

Merleau-Ponty's Last Work
The Visible and the Invisible is the last work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, left unfinished by his untimely death. (Does anyone really have a timely death?)

In this volume from Northwestern University Press, the unfinished text is appended by the working notes for the volume in an excellent translation by Alphonso Lingis with deft editing and a sterling introduction by Claude Lefort.

Merleau-Ponty, arguably the greatest philosopher of the Twentieth Century (he does not carry the baggage Heidegger does), was moving in this volume to a new determination of the relationship between phenomenology and ontology. Reading the volume and the working notes leads the reader to wonder how successful it would have been had Merleau-Ponty lived to publish it. As it is, it adds up to another of the intangibles taht make Western intellectual history such an enticing puzzle. Recommended for anyone interested in Twentieth Century philosophy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

excellent introduction to the philosophy of the body and Merleau-Ponty's Work
After teaching and writing about the phenomenology of the body and Merleau-Ponty for three decades, I am often asked what of his works to start with and I usually say this one for the more serious reader. The essays are engaging and complex and go to the heart of Merleau-Ponty's perspective on how embodiemnt is our way of knowing the world and expressing it. "The Child's Relations with Others" is a brilliant extrapolation from psychological studies of how infants dwell in a shared embodiment and world with other infants and persons, a prereflective realm of affect and perception. This experience will remain as an acquisition throughout life that will surface in love and friendship--the echo of the infant's shared body with others. It may also be repressed by abuse, and Merleau-Ponty looks at this, long before others. "Eye and Mind" is the most concise articulation of both Merleau-Ponty's later poetic "re-languaging" of philosophy and his notion of the artist as expressing our "reversible" relationship with the world around us through a heightening of aspects of perception--where part of what we perceive is how we appear AS IF WE WERE being perceived by that object. It articulates how we only "come to ourselves" through the world, and how the artists expresses this journey of perception and imagination. The other essays are equally powerful. ... Read more

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Collected here are the written traces of courses on the concepts of nature given by Maurice Merieau-Ponty at the College de France in the 1950s--notes that provide a window on the thinking of one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. In two courses distilled by a student and in a third composed of Merieau-Ponty's own notes, the ideas that animated the philosopher's lectures and that informed his later publications emerge in an early, fluid form in the process of being eleborated, negotiated, critiqued, and reconsidered. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Sure, I'm a bit biased, but I LOVED it.
I will write a longer review at a later date.

For now I just want to say that I highly recommend this book for anyone who wishes to understand the concept of Nature and/or the connecting link between Merleau-Ponty's earlier and later writings.Simply fantastic and highly original work here.

His thoughts on evolution are very relevant today; especially if read with the work of Hans Jonas, Merleau-Ponty's other works, and Evan Thompson's recent work (esp. his 2007 book "Mind in Life" and other works with F.J. Varela.)

Important Reading for Students of Merleau-Ponty
"La Nature" is a volume that should be most welcome by students of Merleau-Ponty. It is a translation of three courses given by Merleau-Ponty at the College de France.

The first course, given in 1956-57 is entitled "The Concept of Nature," a survey of the historical elements that constitute the present concept of nature, from Aristotle and the Stoics, through a new reading of Descartes, Kant and a novel look at Schelling. From there it's on to Bergson and Husserl. Merleau-Ponty is tracing the idea of nature in each thinker and how it corresponds to ontology, attempting a new vision of nature more in step with recent developments in science. But he squanders the gains he made when he deals with the developments in physics. This stands as the weakest part of the lectures. Though he gives a good summary of quantum mechanics, he fails to understand the ramifications of quantum physics and its effect on nature, and, ultimately, ontology, preferring instead to hide behind Bergson and the process philosophy of Whitehead. Instead of using the new physics as a starting point, he instead settles for the cul-de-sac of metaphysics.

The second course given in 1957-58, is concerned with deconstructing the Cartesian concept of Nature by examining the recent advances in biology and behavioral studies. Animal as machine is replaced by the animal as being finding itself in the world: How does the animal show itself to others (including humans) - leading to asking what is the structure, then, of its behavior and how does it signify? His lecture of Lorenz's study of instinct is the highlight of this section.

The third course, 1959-60, is entitled "Nature and Logos: The Human Body." He re-examines his findings of the previous years and the emergence of the human body at the intersection of Nature and reason: "the concern is to grasp humanity first as another manner of being a body - to see humanity emerge just like Being in the manner of a watermark, not as another substance, but as `interbeing', and not as an imposition of a for-itself on a body in-itself." This would later begin to developed in his last work, "The Visible and the Invisible," left unfinished by his sudden death. One can only wonder where he might have gone had he only lived to complete the work. These lectures give us a tantalizing peek into what well may have been. ... Read more

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'In simple prose Merleau-Ponty touches on his principle themes. He speaks about the body and the world, the coexistence of space and things, the unfortunate optimism of science – and also the insidious stickiness of honey, and the mystery of anger.' - James Elkins

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was one of the most important thinkers of the post-war era. Central to his thought was the idea that human understanding comes from our bodily experience of the world that we perceive: a deceptively simple argument, perhaps, but one that he felt had to be made in the wake of attacks from contemporary science and the philosophy of Descartes on the reliability of human perception.

From this starting point, Merleau-Ponty presented these seven lectures on The World of Perception to French radio listeners in 1948. Available in a paperback English translation for the first time in the Routledge Classics series to mark the centenary of Merleau-Ponty’s birth, this is a dazzling and accessible guide to a whole universe of experience, from the pursuit of scientific knowledge, through the psychic life of animals to the glories of the art of Paul Cézanne.

Customer Reviews (1)

Finally, an effective way to introduce Merleau-Ponty
As a scholar whose intellectual life has been continually guided and inspired by the work of Merleau-Ponty for three and a half decades, I am overjoyed by the translation and publication of these seven radio lectures given by Merleau-Ponty in France in 1948. For the serious scholar, these are beautifully written and elegant statements about the heart of Merleau-Ponty's project to shift the ground of philosophy and phenomenology by diving into the depth of the perceptual world and turning to art as a touchstone for a reawakened perceptual experience. However, for the beginning philosophy student, they are wonderfully clear, engaging, and immediately comprehensible. For many of us, it has been frustrating that for the introductory student, much of Merleau-Ponty's oeuvre is intimidating or calls for a greater investment of concentration than many students are willing to make. This book is the perfect solution: it is brief, clear, and inviting. The perfect introduction... I can't recommend it highly enough! ... A sheer delight, as well as subtle, nuanced and evocative! ... Read more

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Translated with a new introduction by John O'NeillRaymond Aron called Merleau-Ponty "the most influential French philosopher of his generation." First published in France in 1947, Humanism and Terror was in part a response to Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, and in a larger sense a contribution to the political and moral debates of a postwar world suddenly divided into two ideological armed camps. For Merleau-Ponty, the central question was: could Communism transcend its violence and intentions?

The value of a society is the value it places upon man's relation to man, Merleau-Ponty examines not only the Moscow trials of the late thirties but also Koestler's re-creation of them. He argues that violence in general in the Communist world can be understood only in the context of revolutionary activism. He demonstrates that it is pointless to ask whether Communism respects the rules of liberal society; it is evident that Communism does not.

In post-Communist Europe, when many are addressing similar questions throughout the world, Merleau-Ponty's discourse is of prime importance; it stands as a major and provocative contribution to limits on the use of violence. The argument is placed in its current context in a brilliant new introduction by John O'Neill. His remarks extend the line of argument originally developed by the great French political philosopher. This is a major contribution to political theory and philosophy. ... Read more

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This book features original writings by Merleau-Ponty available only in this volume, including interviews, dialogues, and important texts, reflecting the variety of his thoughts from 1933 to 1960. This second edition includes an expanded bibliography by and on Merleau-Ponty. ... Read more

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This volume is the first English translation of sixteen lectures by Maurice Merleau-Ponty given at the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1947-48 and reconstituted on the basis of notes taken by some of his most outstanding students.Devoted to three of the great names in the French philosphical tradition, Malebranche, Maine de Biran, and Bergson, these lectures center on a classic problem: the union of the soul and the body.

In these lectures Merleau-Ponty demonstrates how Malebranche had articulated an early phenomenology of the human condition, how Maine de Biran had anticipated the central project and related themes of the "Phenomenology of Perception", and how certain featuers of Bergson's method announce key elements of the philosophical methodology expressed in Merleau-Ponty's later works.This volume contains one of Merleau-Ponty's most sustained explications and critiques of Bergson's "Matter and Memory", and, more important, his only major presentation and critique of the thought of Maine de Biran.

This volume is indispensable for students of Merleau-Ponty and for those interested in French philosophy in general. ... Read more

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The past four decades have seen an increasing number of discussions by philosophers, environmentalists, scientists, politicians, and lay persons on the environmental damage done to the earth by human beings. Many of these thinkers and activists have demanded that human beings decide to share the earth with other natural species and not destroy them. Some have discussed human responsibility for the world, environmental ethics, and human stewardship of the earth, but have not ontologically clarified what they mean by these things. This book, based on analysis of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is one of the first attempts to ontologically clarify the idea of sharing the earth with other species. ... Read more