Resistance of the Sensible World: An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty

It would be unfair to blame a philosophy whose development was brutally interrupted for not being conclusive. But while this openness incited many readers toward other fertile horizons, the oeuvre is hardly ever studied for itself.

In this book, Emmanuel Alloa offers a handrail for venturing into the complexities of the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961). Through a comprehensive analysis of the three main phases of his thinking and a thorough knowledge of Merleau-Ponty’s many unpublished manuscripts, he traces how Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy evolved and exposes the remarkable coherence that structures it from within.

While stressing two turns Merleau-Ponty’s thought underwent―a linguistic turn after 1945 and an ontological turn in the late 1950s, Alloa teases out the continuity of a motive that traverses the entire oeuvre as a common thread. Merleau-Ponty struggled incessantly against any kind of ideology of transparency, whether of the world, the self, of knowledge, or of the self’s relation to others.

Alloa’s innovative reading of this crucially important thinker not only offers a new look at Merleau-Ponty but also shows why the issues he raised are more than ever those of our time.