The recent publication of Merleau-Ponty’s work from the late Forties contributes valuable material for those interested in reconstructing a specifically Merleau-Pontian theory of value. In this paper, I examine how, in these texts, Merleau-Ponty’s political concerns show themselves to expand upon the famous analysis of the case of Schneider in Phenomenology of Perception. This retroactively offers an opportunity for a normative reading of the case of Schneider and for identifying Merleau-Ponty’s practical philosophy as concerned with preventing and healing agnosia in (...) politics and ethics. On the basis of this negative hypothesis—that the ethical project is to oppose agnosia—it becomes possible to formulate a positive ethics. There, the unpublished texts also expand upon the Phenomenology of Perception: they propose a humanism which relies on the notion of hermeneutic freedom as the chief practical virtue and elaborate, somewhat unexpectedly, an analysis of play as the existential attitude that corresponds to this virtue. I conclude with a meta-ethical assessment of the merits of this ethical construction. (shrink)