Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others.

This book presents the major philosophical doctrines of phenomenology in a clear, lively style with an abundance of examples. The book examines such phenomena as perception, pictures, imagination, memory, language, and reference, and shows how human thinking arises from experience. It also studies personal identity as established through time and discusses the nature of philosophy. In addition to providing a new interpretation of the correspondence theory of truth, the author also explains how phenomenology differs from both modern and postmodern forms (...) of thinking. (shrink)

First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s monumental _Phénoménologie de la perception _signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers. _Phenomenology of Perception _stands in the great phenomenological tradition of Husserl, (...) Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty’s contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes and Kant, to confront a neglected dimension of our experience: the lived body and the phenomenal world. Charting a bold course between the reductionism of science on the one hand and "intellectualism" on the other, Merleau-Ponty argues that we should regard the body not as a mere biological or physical unit, but as the body which structures one’s situation and experience within the world. Merleau-Ponty enriches his classic work with engaging studies of famous cases in the history of psychology and neurology as well as phenomena that continue to draw our attention, such as phantom limb syndrome, synaesthesia, and hallucination. This new translation includes many helpful features such as the reintroduction of Merleau-Ponty’s discursive Table of Contents as subtitles into the body of the text, a comprehensive Translator’s Introduction to its main themes, essential notes explaining key terms of translation, an extensive Index, and an important updating of Merleau-Ponty’s references to now available English translations. Also included is a new foreword by Taylor Carman and an introduction to Merleau-Ponty_ _by Claude Lefort. Translated by Donald A. Landes. (shrink)

Family traditions take a somatic turn in a therapeutic practice that focuses on how bodies are passed down in families, not as assemblages of biological traits enjoined on the bodies of children by parents but as intentional fabrications devised by children out of the bodies of parents. Somatic psychology holds that parents offer children models of how to be embodied in the form of bodily attitudes. The body shapes I imitate and resist at every stage of life arise out of (...) the memory of the past, incarnate memory in the present, and project the memorial body toward its future. Taking up the techniques by which a person makes her body, the somatic psychologist induces her to unmake and remake it. This is a study of how the flesh remembers. (shrink)

This book expands the concept of the nature of science and provides a practical research alternative for those who work with people and organizations.

"A driving force in all Sartre's writing is his serious desire to change the life of his reader." -- Iris Murdoch.

Feyerabrend argues that intellectual progress relies on the creativity of the scientist, against the authority of science.

Section I: Anti-Rorty -- Knowledge -- Rorty's account of science -- Pragmatism, epistemology, and the inexorability of realism -- Agency -- The essential tension of philosophy and the mirror of nature or a tale of two Rortys -- How is freedom possible? -- Politics -- Self-defining versus social engineering poetry and politics : the problem-field of contingency, irony, and solidarity -- Rorty's apologetics -- Reference, fictionalism and radical negation -- Rorty's changing conceptions of philosophy -- Section II: For critical realism (...) -- Critical realism in context -- Appendix 1: Social theory and moral philosophy -- Appendix 2: Marxist philosophy from Marx to Althusser. (shrink)

Suggests an open system of psychological exploration to cut through accepted norms of morality, language, and politics.

Now acknowledged as a classic in the philosophy of science, A Realist Theory of Science is one of the very few books to transform not only our understanding of science, but that of the nature of the world it studies. The book has inspired the multi-disciplinary and international movement of thought known as critical realism. Re-issued with a new introduction.

Philosopher, novelist, dramatist and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the greatest writers of all time. He was fascinated by the role played by the emotions in human life and placed them at the heart of his philosophy. This brilliant short work - which contains some of the principal ideas later to appear in his masterpiece Being and Nothingness - is Sartre at his best: insightful, engaging and controversial. Far from constraining one's freedom, as we often think, Sartre argues that (...) emotions are fundamental to it and that an emotion is nothing less than 'a transformation of the world'. With a new foreword by Sebastian Gardner. (shrink)

In _Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom_ Roy Bhaskar sets out to develop a critique of the work of Richard Rorty, who must be one of the most influential authors of recent decades. In a brilliant tour de force, Bhaskar shows how Rorty falls victim to the very epistemological problematic Rorty himself describes. Roy Bhaskar argues that Rorty’s account of science and knowledge is based on a half-truth. He sees the historicity of knowledge, but cannot sustain its rationality or the (...) reality of the objects it describes. The author further argues that Rorty’s problem-field replicates the Kantian resolution of the third antinomy: we are determined as material bodies, but free as discursive subjects. Rorty’s actualism makes human agency impossible. Developing his own critical realism, Bhaskar shows just where Rorty’s system comes unstuck, and how the philosophical problems to which it gives rise can be rationally resolved and explained. In this process Bhaskar utilizes his critique of Rorty to begin to elaborate his own alternative interpretation and critique of the philosophical conversation of the West. (shrink)

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)