Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Meaning

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was French phenomenological philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on meaning.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: 48 quotes16 likes

“The world is nothing but 'world-as-meaning.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception (1945), p. xi

“Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

“Philosophy is in history, and is never independent of historical discourse. But for the tacit symbolism of life it substitutes, in principle, a conscious symbolism; for a latent meaning, one that is manifest. It is never content to accept its historical situation. It changes this situation by revealing it to itself.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Source: In Praise of Philosophy (1963), p. 57

“De Lubac discusses an atheism which means to suppress this searching, he says, “even including the problem as to what is responsible for the birth of God in human consciousness.””

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Source: In Praise of Philosophy (1963), p. 45

“Thought without language, says Lavelle, would not be a purer thought; it would be no more than the intention to think. And his last book offers a theory of expressiveness which makes of expression not “a faithful image of an already realized interior being, but the very means by which it is realized.””

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Source: In Praise of Philosophy (1963), p. 8