Summary

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was always more of a phenomenologist than an existentialist. His childhood was happy, and he pursued an academic career rather than rebelling against the system. His most revolutionary work was The Phenomenology of Perception, in which he argues that phenomenology is the way in which people communicate with the world.

He thought that we could only exist in the world through compromising with it, and accepted that rather than fighting it. He was practiced in compromise, and in his own career focused on bringing together two subjects that many thought were sharply opposed— philosophy and psychology. He first wrote his thesis on psychology, then he became a professor of philosophy, then became a professor of psychology, and finally became the head of a philosophy department.

He focused on pondering the meaning of simple actions— sipping a drink or taking a step, for...