Editor's Note

Today, like so many of our number, I’m fumbling around with questionable “courseware” and doing my best to figure it all out. This means, also, like many others, I’m busier than I thought imaginable as I make the transition. So I thought, since I tend to post about the class I teach with a philosopher, I’d just post here what we’re calling “podcasts” of our discussions of Merleau-Ponty for our class with one another. These five discussions all have to do with a single chapter: Part Two, Chapter Three of The Phenomenology of Perception, “The Thing and the Natural World.” Our copy is the Donald A. Landes translation published by Routledge first in 2012.

We started with some riffing in the first discussion to prime the pump a little. (Remember that we’ve been in this here book for several weeks already. If you’ve not already been following this series, I’d suggest catching up. It will make much more sense if you do).

We then went on to answer four questions:

How does Merleau-Ponty account for size and color, and how is his account different from “Empiricist” and “Intellectualist” accounts? What is a “thing” in his account and what makes it “real” How and in what ways does Mo think “The World” is open and unfinished? Finally, what is Mo’s account of hallucinations and how does it differ from “Empiricist” and “Intellectualist” accounts?

Our students, as we speak, are having online discussions about these questions. My pal Andy explains this in the first one of these.

Enjoy? Times are hard these days. Maybe this will help. It helped us.