SOURCE: Dolgov, K. M. “The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.” Soviet Studies in Philosophy 14, no. 3 (winter 1975): 67-92.

In the following essay, Dolgov presents an overview of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological and aesthetic system of thought.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty enjoys a special place among contemporary French bourgeois philosophers and aestheticians. Statements by Sartre, Camus, Hyppolite, Dufrenne, Ricoeur, Geroux, Lévi-Strauss, and others show that they experienced (and some continue to this day to experience) in one way or another the influence of this philosopher. For example, all French phenomenologists and existentialists recognize that Merleau-Ponty was the first to take up and pursue, on French soil, the elaboration of the ideas of Husserlian phenomenology and German existentialism.¹ One cannot fail to note that various kinds of antidialectical and metaphysical notions have come into being under the direct and powerful influence of Merleau-Ponty.

As far as the philosopher's political views are concerned, their...