The World of Perception

'In simple prose Merleau-Ponty touches on his principle themes. He speaks about the body and the world, the coexistence of space and things, the unfortunate optimism of science – and also the insidious stickiness of honey, and the mystery of anger.' - James Elkins Maurice Merleau-Ponty was one of the most important thinkers of the post-war era. Central to his thought was the idea that human understanding comes from our bodily experience of the world that we perceive: a deceptively simple argument, perhaps, but one that he felt had to be made in the wake of attacks from contemporary science and the philosophy of Descartes on the reliability of human perception. From this starting point, Merleau-Ponty presented these seven lectures on The World of Perception to French radio listeners in1948. Available in a paperback English translation for the first time in the Routledge Classics series to mark the centenary of Merleau-Ponty’s birth, this is a dazzling and accessible guide to a whole universe of experience, from the pursuit of scientific knowledge, through the psychic life of animals to the glories of the art of Paul Cézanne.

莫里斯·梅洛-庞蒂（Maurice Merleau-Ponty,1908—1961）,法国著名哲学家、思想家。梅洛-庞蒂极大地促进了胡塞尔及海德格尔所开创的现象学传统在法国的传播和发展。他对绘画艺术、文学等亦有精深独到的见解。1952年当选法兰西学院院士。1945年出版其代表性著作《知觉现象学》后，又陆续出版《人道主义和恐怖》、《意义与无意义》、《辩证法的历险》、《符号》等哲学著作，还有一些著述和讲稿在其去世后经整理出版，如《眼与心》、《可见的与不可见的》、《世界的散文》等。