Merleau-Ponty Resources

Given my interests in psychology, philosophy of mind, and embodiment, I have found Merleau-Ponty's thought to be incredibly thought provoking and useful. However, it can sometimes be hard to find good Merleau-Ponty sources. I attribute this to at least two reasons, the second stemming from the first: people tend to 1) emphasize his Husserlian roots and 2) forget his Heideggerian roots. I will admit that my own acceptance of these reasons stem from a claim given by one of my old professors, Mark Wrathall, who's class introduced me to Merleau-Ponty. Wrathall thinks that Merleau-Ponty's attribution of primacy to Husserl in his Introduction to Phenomenology of Perception is more of a political move than not, showing his distaste for Heidegger's Soviet Socialist affiliations. My own reading (siding with Mark Wrathall, Hubert Dreyfus, Sean Kelly, etc.) seems to validate this belief: Merleau-Ponty is thoroughly Heideggerian, and secondarily Husserlian. This is a point of contention in some circles of Merleau-Pontian scholarship, so I will leave it at this and let the reader decide for herself/himself.

Here are a number of links and online papers that I've personally found useful in understanding and applying Merleau-Ponty's thought in my own studies:

• Bernard Flynn, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)¹
• Jack Reynolds, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) (The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Brent Dean Robbins, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Mythos and Logos)
• Charles Taylor, Merleau-Ponty
• Hubert Dreyfus, Intelligence Without Representation (Cognitive Sciences Initiative)
• Hubert Dreyfus, The Current Relevance of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Embodiment (The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 4 (Spring 1996))
• Hubert Dreyfus, Overcoming the Myth of the Mental: How Philosophers Can Profit from the Phenomenology of Everyday Expertise (APA Pacific Division Presidential Address 2005)
• Hubert Dreyfus, A Phenomenology of Skill Acquisition as the basis for a Merleau-Pontian Non-Representationalist Cognitive Science
• Sean Kelly, Seeing Things in Merleau-Ponty (appearing in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty)
• Sean Kelly, Merleau-Ponty on the Body: The Logic of Motor Intentional Activity (in Ratio (new series), vol. XV, no. 4 (Dec. 2002), pp. 376-391)
• Sean Kelly, Grasping at Straws: Motor Intentionality and the Cognitive Science of Skillful Action (in Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall and Jeff Malpas, eds. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 161-178)
• Sean Kelly, What Do We See (When We Do)? (in Philosophical Topics 27/2, 107-128)
• Taylor Carman, Sensation, Judgment, and the Phenomenal Field (appearing in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty)
• Taylor Carman, The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty (in Philosophical Topics 27/2, 205-226)
• Mark Wrathall, Motives, Reasons, Causes (appearing in The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty)
• Mark Wrathall and Sean Kelly, Existential Phenomenology and Cognitive Science (The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 4 (Spring 1996))
• Shaun Gallagher, Phenomenology and Neurophenomenology: An Interview (in Aluze: Revue pro literaturu, filozofii a jiné (Czech Republic) 2: 92-102)
• Shaun Gallagher, Phenomenological and Experimental Research on Embodied Experience (a presentation at Atelier phenomenologie et cognition, Phénoménologie et Cognition Research Group, CREA. Paris (December 2000))
• Shaun Gallagher and Andrew Meltzoff, The Earliest Sense of Self and Others: Merleau-Ponty and Recent Developmental Studies (in Philosophical Psychology 9, 213-236)

In addition to the above, I believe that Alva Noë's work on embodied cognition is quite close to what Merleau-Ponty is trying to say. I would also suggest Samuel Todes' Body and World as a good advancement on certain aspects of Merleau-Ponty's thought.

NOTES

1. Flynn appears to accept Merleau-Ponty's acceptance of Husserl over Heidegger. This is a particularly telling statement that simultaneously diminishes Heidegger's influence and misunderstands Heidegger's claim: "Unlike Heidegger, he does not have a dismissive attitude towards science, namely, that it 'does not think' or that it is merely calculation." Practically every mention of Heidegger is made to differentiate his thought from Merleau-Ponty's. Again, there is disagreement on this matter.