Merleau-Ponty and the Possibilities of Philosophy

Leading scholars engage the later contributions of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.Maurice Merleau-Ponty is arguably the preeminent French philosopher of the last century, and interest in his thought is growing exponentially. This volume celebrates and interrogates the thought of Merleau-Ponty by drawing upon both classic and state-of-the-art assessments, some available in English here for the first time. The result is an essential collection of essays that explore Merleau-Ponty's importance in terms of his originality vis-à-vis the philosophical tradition, and examine his major insights about such contemporary concerns as subjectivity, the question of the other and sociality, the natural and the human, art, the sensible and the intelligible, and the philosophical study of language. Penetrating and illuminating, these essays firmly install Merleau-Ponty among the most innovative and critically debated thinkers of the past half century.Bernard Flynn is Professor of Philosophy at Empire State College, State University of New York, and he also teaches philosophy at the New School for Social Research. His books include The Philosophy of Claude Lefort: Interpreting the Political and Political Philosophy at the Closure of Metaphysics. Wayne J. Froman is Professor of Philosophy at George Mason University and the author of Merleau-Ponty: Language and the Act of Speech. Robert Vallier is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Assistant Director of the Honors Program at DePaul University. He is the translator of Merleau-Ponty's Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France.