Quotessence
Home / Authors / Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldPhenomenologyBodyExistencePhilosophyThinkingPerceptionExpressionFieldsLanguageObjectsSelfArtConsciousnessDoeKnowsMenSpeakActionBelieve

Famous Maurice Merleau-Ponty Quotes

“Lichtenberg ... held something of the following kind: one should neither affirm the existence of God nor deny it. ... It is not that he wished to leave certain perspectives open, nor to please everyone. It is rather that he was identifying himself, for his part, with a consciousness of self, of the world, and of others that was "strange" (the word is his) in a sense which is equally well destroyed by the rival explanations.”

WorldShouldWellsKindSelfCertainExistenceConsciousnessStrangePerspectivePleaseFollowingDenyDestroyedExplanationRivalsIdentifyingExistence Of God
Author:Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Create image

“Being established in my life, buttressed by my thinking nature, fastened down in this transcendental field which was opened for me by my first perception, and in which all absence is merely the obverse of a presence, all silence a modality of the being of sound, I enjoy a sort of ubiquity and theoretical eternity, I feel destined to move in a flow of endless life, neither the beginning nor the end of which I can experience in thought, since it is my living self who think of them, and since thus my life always precedes and survives itself.”

ThinkingFeelsFirstsI CanEndsSelfMovingEnjoySoundSilenceFieldsPerceptionFlowEternityAbsenceEndlessDestinedTheoreticalTranscendentalUbiquityEndless Life
Book:Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings
Create image

“All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.”

KnowsMindIdeasSelfFactsActionGivenExistenceConsciousnessReflectionDirectRootsContactObservationRecogniseSelf ConsciousnessInference
Book:Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings
Create image