Maurice Merleau-Ponty Quotes
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a 20th-century French phenomenologist and one of the most original philosophers of the post-war French tradition. His 1945 work Phenomenology of Perception developed an account of the lived body as the primary site of experience, against both empiricist and intellectualist accounts of perception. The quotes below are attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, organized by topic.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty on Knowledge
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Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“We come to know the world through our body.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty on Life
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Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.”
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Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“The world is not what I think, but what I live through.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty on Mind
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Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“The body is the vehicle of being in the world.”
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Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out.”
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Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty on Truth
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Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or rather there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.”
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Attributed to Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“The phenomenological world is not pure being, but the sense which is revealed where the paths of my various experiences intersect.”