ABSTRACT

Merleau-Ponty was one of the most creative philosophers of the twentieth century. He combined a new way of thinking about the basic structures of human life with reflections on art, literature and politics which draw on this new philosophy. During the German occupation of France Merleau-Ponty initially joined Sartre, with whom he now became a close friend, in a quixotic attempt during 1941 to constitute an intellectual resistance movement (‘Socialism and Freedom’) distinct from the forces of the communists and the Gaullists. This movement collapsed at the end of the year, largely because of its ineffectiveness; and Merleau-Ponty and Sartre then withdrew to write their major works of philosophy (Sartre’s Being and Nothingness dates from this period). The central theme of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, from The Structure of Behavior to The Visible and the Invisible, is precisely the way in which ‘the phenomenon of the body’ is to be integrated into a Kantian philosophy.