Lof der wijsbegeerte: Inaugurale rede uitgesproken voor het Collège de France op donderdag 15 januari 1953

by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

De filosoof is de mens die ontwaakt en spreekt, zo stelt Merleau-Ponty in zijn Lof der Wijsbegeerte. In deze in 1953 uitgesproken redevoering kijkt Merleau-Ponty terug naar zijn voorgangers en voorbeelden, zoals Socrates en Bergson.

Genres: Philosophy

103 pages, Paperback

First published November 18, 1953

About the author

French 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.

Reviews

[Seppe]

"De filosoof is de mens die ontwaakt en die spreekt, en de mens draagt stil in zich mee de paradoxen van de filosofie, omdat om helemaal mens te zijn men een beetje meer en een beetje minder dan mens moet zijn." p.98

[Tijmen Lansdaal · Rating 3 out of 5]

A unique mission statement for a re-invented humanistic philosophy, though its foundation cannot be an absolute knowledge. Perhaps that sounds a little dated, or bland, but I guess it only serves Merleau-Ponty's point that philosophy is a situated undertaking. Despite its pleasantly honest and intelligent tone, this praise doesn't really feel all that fleshed out, and my guess is that it therefor would be too vague or uninteresting to readers unfamiliar with his other works. He could've, for instance, tried to sketch why his approach could be distinguished from Sartre's, or elaborated on what kind of irony we're talking about as the weapon of choice for this approach. Besides, those pieces on Lavelle and Bergson are probably decent only if you're into them, though boring if you're more into Merleau-Ponty.