ABSTRACT
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61) was a French intellectual particularly interested in the nature of human consciousness as embodied experience. He was born in Rochefort-surmer, France. As a student at the the École normale supérieure, he became interested in phenomenology-the philosophical study of the perception of things-through the work of Husserl and Heidegger. After graduating in 1930, Merleau-Ponty taught at different high schools. During the 1930s he was associated with the leftist Catholic journal, Esprit.
