[Xmca-l] Re: Leontyev's activities

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

I received it.

On 20 August 2013 23:20, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:

> Earlier today I tried to send a message about a new translation of
> Merleau-Ponty's book Phenomenology of Perception. Apparently my message
> disappeared into the aether - which is unfortunate because I think that M-P
> provides an example of what Lubomir is looking for. Merleau-Ponty wrote
> about both humanism/existentialism and marxism, and his
> philosophical/psychological writings dissolved the boundaries between these
> two. I am copying below the publisher's information and a link.
>
> Martin
>
> On Aug 20, 2013, at 5:05 PM, Lubomir Savov Popov <lspopov@bgsu.edu>
>  wrote:
>
> > It is interesting to study how ideas about holistic presentation of
> reality are operationalized/concretized in Dialectical Materialism and in
> the humanist approaches.
>
> <http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415834339/>
>
> 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.
>
> ====
> "It is impossible to define an object in cutting it off from the subject
> through which and for which it is an object; and the subject reveals itself
> only through the objects in which it is engaged. Such an affirmation only
> makes the content of naive experience explicit, but it is rich in
> consequences. Only in taking it as a basis will one succeed in building an
> ethics to which man can totally and sincerely adhere. It is therefore of
> extreme importance to establish it solidly and to give back to man this
> childish audacity that years of verbal submission have taken away: the
> audacity to say: "I am here." This is why The Phenomenology of Perception
> by Maurice Merleau-Ponty is not only a remarkable specialist work but a
> book that is of interest to the whole of man and to every man; the human
> condition is at stake in this book." - Simone de Beauvoir, 1945
>
> ====
> Foreword, Taylor Carman
> Introduction, Claude Lefort
> Preface
> Introduction: Classical Prejudices and the Return to Phenomena
> I. Sensation
> II. Association and the Projection of Memories
> III. Attention and Judgment
> IV. The Phenomenal Field
> Part 1: The Body
> 1. The Body as an Object and Mechanistic Physiology
> 2. The Experience of the Body and Classical Psychology
> 3. The Spatiality of the One’s Own Body and Motility
> 4. The Synthesis of One’s Own Body
> 5. The Body as a Sexed Being
> 6. Speech and the Body as Expression
> Part 2: The Perceived World
> 7. Sensing
> 8. Space
> 9. The Thing and the Natural World
> 10. Others and the Human World
> Part 3: Being-For-Itself and Being-In-The-World
> 11. The Cogito
> 12. Temporality
> 13. Freedom
> Original Bibliography
> Bibliography of English Translations cited
> Additional Work Cited
> Index
>
> Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, France. Drawn
> to philosophy from a young age, Merleau-Ponty would go on to study
> alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Simone Weil at the
> famous École Normale Supérieure. He completed a Docteur ès lettres based on
> two dissertations, La structure du comportement (1942) andPhénoménologie de
> la perception (1945). After a brief post at the University of Lyon,
> Merleau-Ponty returned to Paris in 1949 when he was awarded the Chair of
> Psychology and Pedagogy at the Sorbonne. In 1952 he became the youngest
> philosopher ever appointed to the prestigious Chair of Philosophy at the
> Collège de France. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 aged fifty-three,
> at the height of his career. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in
> Paris.
>
>