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Consciousness and the Aquisition of Language
The tools, concepts, and vocabulary of phenomenology are used in this book to explore language in a multitude of contexts.
108 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1973
4 people are currently reading
141 people want to read
About the author
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
119 books598 followersFrench phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role that perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like the other major phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, and politics; however Merleau-Ponty was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the Twentieth Century to engage extensively with the sciences, and especially with descriptive psychology. Because of this engagement, his writings have become influential with the recent project of naturalizing phenomenology in which phenomenologists utilize the results of psychology and cognitive science.
Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime. His father was killed in World War 1 when Merleau-Ponty was 3. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty first taught at Chartres, then became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for Les Temps Modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952.
Aged 53, he died suddenly of a stroke in 1961, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes. He was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Merleau-Ponty was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Maritime. His father was killed in World War 1 when Merleau-Ponty was 3. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Maurice Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Merleau-Ponty first taught at Chartres, then became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: La structure du comportement (1942) and Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945).
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for Les Temps Modernes from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952.
Aged 53, he died suddenly of a stroke in 1961, apparently while preparing for a class on Descartes. He was buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
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July 6, 2024
I just realized I am the first person to review this on Goodreads so I’ll start by explaining why I decided to read this!
Merleau-Ponty landed a place on my TBR after I read Sarah Bakewell’s “At the Existentialist Cafe” where she highlighted how he was able to combine philosophy and psychology. I initially intended to read his “Phenomenology of Perception,” but this book—sitting on the same shelf—stole my attention. I know next to nothing about linguistics and philosophy of language, but they’ve recently piqued my curiosity, especially since as a kid my number one question about the world was: “HOW DO BABIES SUDDENLY KNOW HOW TO TALK?” So I am eager to dive into psycholinguistics at some point, and these transcribed lectures seemed up that alley. It also helps that this is way shorter than Phenomenology of Perception HAHAHA, and that this was written in its foreword: “We are immediately struck by how clearly written, easy to understand, and analytically organized his courses were in contrast to his published books. Merleau-Ponty's lectures are lucidity itself. Would that the arguments in the Phenomenology of Perception were as easy to follow!” And they weren’t wrong—this was significantly easier to digest than, say, Levinas’s Humanism of the Other (which I left unfinished in exasperation, questioning whether I had any reading comprehension skills at all). To be honest though, I still need to get used to the academic philosophical writing style of “this scholar claimed that ___, *insert long explanation of the argument and its evidence* BUT ACTUALLY HE WAS COMPLETELY WRONG, HERE'S WHY!”
Nothing in this book made me gasp and jump around my room, but there were still some interesting takeaways, like:
1. The egocentrism of children. According to Piaget: “for the child there is no difference between self and others (this is precisely the nature of the child's egocentrism). He believes that his thoughts and his sentiments are universal.” It’s interesting because I learned about Piaget’s theories on child egocentrism in IB Psych, but didn’t know how it was tied to language (it was instead Vygotsky’s stages of language that we learned about).
2. The nature of imitation, in general and in language, and how it can combat the un-differentiation between self and other. “To imitate is not to act like others, but to obtain the same result as others. One makes use of his own body not as a mass of sensations, but as a way of systematically going toward objects. In imitation, other people are first considered not as body but as behavior.”
3. The infinitude of language. “Certain words arise in us only when we need them, in the same way that the spark is not contained in the stone but is formed by the contact with the metal that strikes it. Language, as an instrument, is not comparable to a hammer which has a finite number of uses. It is rather like a piano out of which one can draw an indefinite number of melodies.”
Merleau-Ponty landed a place on my TBR after I read Sarah Bakewell’s “At the Existentialist Cafe” where she highlighted how he was able to combine philosophy and psychology. I initially intended to read his “Phenomenology of Perception,” but this book—sitting on the same shelf—stole my attention. I know next to nothing about linguistics and philosophy of language, but they’ve recently piqued my curiosity, especially since as a kid my number one question about the world was: “HOW DO BABIES SUDDENLY KNOW HOW TO TALK?” So I am eager to dive into psycholinguistics at some point, and these transcribed lectures seemed up that alley. It also helps that this is way shorter than Phenomenology of Perception HAHAHA, and that this was written in its foreword: “We are immediately struck by how clearly written, easy to understand, and analytically organized his courses were in contrast to his published books. Merleau-Ponty's lectures are lucidity itself. Would that the arguments in the Phenomenology of Perception were as easy to follow!” And they weren’t wrong—this was significantly easier to digest than, say, Levinas’s Humanism of the Other (which I left unfinished in exasperation, questioning whether I had any reading comprehension skills at all). To be honest though, I still need to get used to the academic philosophical writing style of “this scholar claimed that ___, *insert long explanation of the argument and its evidence* BUT ACTUALLY HE WAS COMPLETELY WRONG, HERE'S WHY!”
Nothing in this book made me gasp and jump around my room, but there were still some interesting takeaways, like:
1. The egocentrism of children. According to Piaget: “for the child there is no difference between self and others (this is precisely the nature of the child's egocentrism). He believes that his thoughts and his sentiments are universal.” It’s interesting because I learned about Piaget’s theories on child egocentrism in IB Psych, but didn’t know how it was tied to language (it was instead Vygotsky’s stages of language that we learned about).
2. The nature of imitation, in general and in language, and how it can combat the un-differentiation between self and other. “To imitate is not to act like others, but to obtain the same result as others. One makes use of his own body not as a mass of sensations, but as a way of systematically going toward objects. In imitation, other people are first considered not as body but as behavior.”
3. The infinitude of language. “Certain words arise in us only when we need them, in the same way that the spark is not contained in the stone but is formed by the contact with the metal that strikes it. Language, as an instrument, is not comparable to a hammer which has a finite number of uses. It is rather like a piano out of which one can draw an indefinite number of melodies.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review