Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–61)

List of works

There is a complete list of Merleau-Ponty’s works, together with what was then a full list of secondary literature in: Lapointe, F. and Lapointe, C. (1976) Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his Critics: An International Bibliography, New York: Garland.

	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1942) La Structure de comportement, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; trans. A. Fisher, The Structure of Behavior, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1963. (Merleau-Ponty here develops his ‘dialectical’ approach to psychology.)
	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945) Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard; trans. C. Smith, The Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge, 1962. (Merleau-Ponty’s major work, using psychology to reconstruct classical phenomenology.)
	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1946) ‘L’existentialisme chez Hegel’ (‘Existentialism in Hegel’), Les Temps modernes 1: 1311–1319; repr. in Sens et non-sens, Paris: Nagel, 1948; trans. H.L. Dreyfus and P.A. Dreyfus, Sense and Non-Sense, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964, 63–70. (Discusses the existentialist themes in Hegel’s thought.)
	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1947) Humanisme et terreur, Paris: Gallimard; trans. J. O’Neill, Humanism and Terror, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969. (Merleau-Ponty’s Marxist response to Koestler’s Darkness at Noon; an unconvincing critique of liberal politics.)
	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1948) Sens et non-sens, Paris: Gallimard; trans. H. Dreyfus and P. Dreyfus, Sense and Non-Sense, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964. (A collection of Merleau-Ponty’s early essays, including some on literature and painting.)
	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1955) Les Aventures de la dialectique, Paris: Gallimard; trans. J. Bien, Adventures of the Dialectic, London: Heinemann, 1974. (A collection of essays on Marxism, including Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Sartre’s ‘ultra-bolshevism’.)
	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1960) Signes, Paris: Gallimard; trans. R. McCleary, Signs, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964. (Merleau-Ponty’s later essays, including some on language.)
	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964) Le Visible et l’invisible, ed. C. Lefort, Paris: Gallimard; trans. A. Lingis, The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968. (Merleau-Ponty’s incomplete attempt to rework the central themes of his phenomenology.)
	Merleau-Ponty, M. (1969) La Prose du monde, ed. C. Lefort, Paris: Gallimard; trans. J. O’Neill, The Prose of the World, London: Heinemann, 1974. (The text of a projected book on language, abandoned in 1952.)

References and further reading

	Archard, D. (1980) Marxism and Existentialism, Belfast: Blackstaff Press. (A useful guide to the quarrel between Merleau-Ponty and Sartre.)
	Edie, J. (1987) Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Language: Structuralism and Dialectics, Washington, DC: University Press of America. (An authoritative discussion by one of America’s leading scholars.)
	Goldstein, K. (1934) Der Aufbau der Organismus, The Hague: Nijhoff; trans. The Organism, New York: American Book, 1938. (A classic work on the holistic aspect of the life of organisms, on which Merleau-Ponty relies in The Structure of Behavior.)
	Hadreas, P. (1986) In Place of the Flawed Diamond, New York: Peter Lang. (A short but thoughtful Heideggerian account of Merleau-Ponty’s work.)
	Husserl, E. (1931) Méditations cartésiennes, Paris: Colin; trans. D. Cairns, Cartesian Meditations, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960. (Husserl’s Paris lectures, which Merleau-Ponty attended as a student in 1929.)
	Madison, G. (1981) The Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. (A general survey, especially useful in elucidating the significance of themes from Merleau-Ponty’s later writings.)
	Mallin, S. (1979) Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (An account which focuses on Merleau-Ponty as a phenomenologist.)
	O’Neill, J. (1970) Perception, Expression and History, Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press; repr. as the introduction to J. O’Neil (ed.) Phenomenology, Language and Sociology, London: Heinemann, 1974, xi–lxii. (Although this latter volume is primarily a useful selection of Merleau-Ponty’s essays, it contains O’Neill’s important essay, which focuses on Merleau-Ponty’s political writings, and a bibliography of works on Merleau-Ponty up to 1972.)
	Olafson, F. (1967) ‘A Central theme of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy’, in E. Lee and M. Mandelbaum (eds) Phenomenology and Existentialism, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 179–205. (An excellent introduction to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of perception, by a scholar who also contributed an excellent article on Merleau-Ponty to Edwards’ Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)
	Sartre, J.-P. (1943) L’Être et le néant, Paris: Gallimard; trans. H. Barnes, Being and Nothingness, New York: The Philosophical Library, 1956. (Sartre’s classic work of existential phenomenology which Merleau-Ponty criticizes at the end of The Phenomenology of Perception.)
	Sartre, J.-P. (1961) ‘Merleau-Ponty vivant’, Les Temps modernes 17 (184–5): 304–376; repr. in Situations IV, Paris: Gallimard, 1964; trans. B. Eisler, Situations IV, New York: Brazilier, 1965. (Sartre’s moving and intelligent tribute to his old comrade; the whole issue of Les Temps modernes is taken up with tributes to Merleau-Ponty, from Lefort, Lacan and others. Curiously, Sartre’s published text is an almost complete replacement of another, even better, text which is published in translation as ‘Merleau-Ponty (I)’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 15 (2): 128–58.)
	Waelhens, A. de (1969) Une Philosophie de l’ambiguité (revised edition), Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain. (Still the best general account of Merleau-Ponty’s work, especially good at situating it in relation to the work of other philosophers.)