Conclusion: A Critical Assessment of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception

Abstract

Merleau-Ponty’s central concern in the Phenomenology of Perception is to prompt us to recognize that objective thought fundamentally distorts the phenomena of our lived experience, thereby estranging us from our own selves, the world in which we live and other people with whom we interact. Such thinking is not confined to a single discipline or to a particular philosophical tradition. On the contrary, not only is it common to the sciences, social sciences and humanities, but it underlies both realism and idealism and feeds on common sense itself. In exposing the bias of objective thought, Merleau-Ponty seeks to re-establish our roots in corporeality and the perceptual world, while awakening us to an appreciation of the inherent ambiguity of our lived experience.