Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Wai-Shun Hung (Seattle University)

Ed. by David Houston Jones, University of Exeter
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.06: French Writing and Culture: Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 14 Mar 1908
Died 3 May 1961
Activity 1928-1961

Places

Born in France
Active in France

Activities

Primary

Philosopher

Resources

Merleau-Ponty's Works

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Maurice Jean-Jacques Merleau-Ponty was born on 14 March 1908 in the seaside town of Rochefort-sur-Mer to a Catholic family. Following the loss of his father in the First World War, he was brought up by his mother with his brother and sister. He began his secondary education in Le Havre before finishing at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris and entering the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in 1926. There he studied under Léon Brunschvicg, Jean Cavaillès, Émile Bréhier and others, and counted Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Raymond Aron among his friends. After graduating and obtaining his

agrégation

in 1930, he continued on this typical path for a French academic and became a philosophy teacher at a lycée in Beauvais. Looking back in the 1950s upon his…

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3892 words

Citation: Hung, Wai-Shun. "Maurice Merleau-Ponty". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 November 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3090, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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