Abstract

This chapter introduces Merleau-Ponty's philosophy as implicitly ecological, developing within the context of phenomenology initiated by Husserl and further expanded by Heidegger. Describing Merleau-Ponty's distinctive focus on the body in Phenomenology of Perception and his ontology of dynamic intertwining or chiasm in The Visible and the Invisible, the discussion places particular emphasis on his lifelong engagement with modern science and its culmination in the Nature lectures in which he explored the philosophical consequences of twentieth-century science. The chapter concludes with analysis of literary explorations of embodiment by Eudora Welty and W.H. Auden.

Share