ABSTRACT
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty was concerned with the nature of embodiment, developing an understanding of dialogue as being present in the world and to Others. He was a leading proponent of phenomenology and is sometimes called the 'philosopher of the body'. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is associated with the philosophical movement of existentialism, although he did not argue for the radical freedom advocated by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The two major influences on Merleau-Ponty's thought are the phenomenology of Husserl and of Heidegger, two thinkers who, also influenced Arendt and Levinas, and the German school of Gestalt psychology. Merleau-Ponty's understanding of language is, unsurprisingly, fundamentally phenomenological in nature. The reciprocity embedded in Merleau-Ponty's understanding of dialogue might, prima facie, appear like Martin Buber's. Merleau-Ponty's understanding of dialogue and his views of 'learning' as having the distinct but interconnected layers have some significant implications for our understanding of 'play' and the 'practice of sport'.
