<p>Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, his popularity has increased among philosophers in recent years. Merleau-Ponty rejected Rene Descartes’ division between body and mind, arguing that the way we perceive the world around us cannot be separated from our experience of inhabiting a physical body. Merleau-Ponty was interested in the down-to-earth question of what it is actually like to live in the world. While performing actions as simple as brushing our teeth or patting a dog, we shape the world and, in turn, the world shapes us.
With </p><p>Komarine Romdenh-Romluc
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield</p><p>Thomas Baldwin
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of York</p><p>And </p><p>Timothy Mooney
Associate Professor of Philosophy at University College, Dublin</p><p>Produced by Eliane Glaser</p><p>Reading list:</p><p>Peter Antich, Motivation and the Primacy of Perception: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of
Knowledge (Ohio University Press, 2021)</p><p>Dimitris Apostolopoulos, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Language (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) </p><p>Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails (Chatto and Windus, 2016) </p><p>Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings (Routledge, 2004)</p><p>Thomas Baldwin (ed.), Reading Merleau-Ponty (Routledge, 2007)</p><p>Renaud Barbaras (trans. Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor), The Being of the Phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Indiana University Press, 2004).</p><p>Anya Daly, Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)</p><p>M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Northwestern University Press, 1998, 2nd ed.) </p><p>Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Alden L. Fisher), The Structure of Behavior (first published 1942; Beacon Press, 1976)</p><p>Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Donald Landes), Phenomenology of Perception (first published 1945; Routledge, 2011)</p><p>Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (first published 1948; Northwestern University Press, 1964)</p><p>Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs (first published 1960; Northwestern University Press, 1964)</p><p>Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (first published 1964; Northwestern University Press, 1968)</p><p>Maurice Merleau-Ponty (trans. Oliver Davis with an introduction by Thomas Baldwin), The World of Perception (Routledge, 2008)</p><p>Ariane Mildenberg (ed.), Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2019)</p><p>Timothy Mooney, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception: On the Body Informed
(Cambridge University Press, 2023) </p><p>Katherine J. Morris, Starting with Merleau-Ponty (Continuum, 2012) </p><p>Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2011)</p><p>Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, The Routledge Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge, 2011)</p><p>Jean-Paul Sartre (trans. Benita Eisler), Situations (Hamish Hamilton, 1965)</p><p>Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department (Penguin, 2003)</p><p>Jon Stewart (ed.), The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty (Northwestern University Press, 1998)</p><p>Ted Toadvine, Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Northwestern University
Press, 2009)</p><p>Kerry Whiteside, Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of an Existential Politics (Princeton University Press, 1988)</p><p>Iris Marion Young, On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2005)</p><p>In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production</p>
