The term ‘phenomenology’ has become almost as over-used and emptied of meaning as that other word from Continental Philosophy, namely ‘existentialism’. Yet Husserl, who first put forward the phenomenological method, considered it a rigorous alternative to positivism, and in the hands of Merleau-Ponty, a disciple of Husserl in France, phenomenology became a way of gaining a disciplined and coherent perspective on the world in which we live.
When this study originally published in 1977 there were only a few books in English on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. It introduced the reader and suggested how his thought might throw light on some of the assumptions and presuppositions of certain contemporary forms of Anglo-Saxon philosophy and social science. It also demonstrates how phenomenology seeks to unite philosophy and social science, rather than define them as mutually exclusive domains of knowledge.
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motw/Phenomenology and the Social Wo - Laurie Spurling.epub

motw/Phenomenology and the Social Wo - Laurie Spurling.pdf

Spurling, Laurie;

Ashgate Publishing Limited

Taylor & Francis Group

Routledge & Kegan Paul

Taylor & Francis Ltd

Gower Publishing Ltd

Routledge Library Editions: Phenomenology, Londres (Inglaterra), 2014

Routledge library editions. Phenomenology, volume 11, London, 2014

Routledge library editions. Phenomenology, London, 2013

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

1, 2013

producers:
ABBYY FineReader 11

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Cover 1
Half Title 2
Title Page 4
Copyright Page 5
Original Title Page 6
Original Copyright Page 7
Table of Contents 8
Preface 12
Acknowledgments 16
Introduction 18
1 The programme of existential phenomenology 23
Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology 23
Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism and rationalism 27
Being-in-the-world 31
Intentionality 33
The body 38
Perception 42
Object and world 47
The three worlds of perception 49
The primacy of perception 51
Space, distance, movement 52
Time 55
Other persons 57
Consciousness as perceptual 59
Consciousness as expressing 60
A note on Merleau-Ponty's late philosophy 62
2 Speech 65
The phenomenology of speech 65
Speech as intersubjectivity 69
Speech as intentionality 70
The conceptual and gestural levels of speech 71
Speech and thought 73
Sedimentation and structure 74
Speech as praxis 77
Wittgenstein: from ideal language to everyday speech 79
Ethnomethodology: the reflexivity of speech 82
The ambiguity of speech 83
Speech and the world 89
Authentic speech 90
3 Society 93
Positivism 93
Living with positivism 95
The question of meaning 98
Phenomenology and social science 101
Society as intersubjective reality 103
The concept of situation 104
The concept of structure 106
4 Marxism 109
Existential phenomenology and Marxism: the charge of incompatibility 110
The continuity between phenomenology and Marxism 115
A note on relativism and truth 120
Equivocations 122
5 Ethics 127
Description and evaluation 128
Phenomenology: the grounding of values in facts 133
Freedom 136
Freedom and responsibility 139
Freedom and moral rules 141
Authenticity 142
Self-revelation and self-deception 144
Spontaneity 147
Embodiment 149
Merleau-Ponty's humanism 151
Ambiguity and dialectic 152
An existential ethics 157
6 Philosophy 160
The reflective and the pre-reflective 160
The critique of introspection 162
Philosophy as radical reflection 163
Merleau-Ponty's conceptual revision 166
Philosophy as re-presentation 170
A note on truth and adequacy 172
Non-thematic knowledge 174
The paradox of philosophy 179
7 Conclusion 181
The transcendental and the descriptive 181
Phenomenology as a dialectic between the transcendental and the descriptive 184
Blum: the failure of the descriptive 187
Schutz and the ethnomethodologists: the failure of the transcendental 188
Wittgenstein: an unhappy dialectic 192
Sartre: a dialectic without synthesis 196
Notes 200
Bibliography 214
Works of Merleau-Ponty cited in the text 214
Other works cited in the text 214
Index 220

2025-10-27