Course 3 · Module 2
Merleau-Ponty: The Body-Subject
Explore Merleau-Ponty's account of the body as a subject that understands its world through movement, before any explicit thought. You'll learn the body schema and motor intentionality, analyze the phantom limb and the famous Schneider case, and describe how habits and skills weave tools into the lived body. These ideas are the direct philosophical basis for embodied cognition research on action, skill, and tool use.
Module objectives
- Explain the body schema and motor intentionality as forms of bodily understanding that precede explicit thought
- Analyze the phantom limb and the Schneider case as evidence against mechanistic and intellectualist accounts of the body
- Describe how habit and skill incorporate instruments and extend the lived body
Lessons
- Lesson 1 Body-Subject: Body Schema and Motor Intentionality This lesson presents Merleau-Ponty's account of one's own body (corps propre): its body schema, its "spatiality of situation," and motor intentionality, the way movement is… 61111h 3m
- Lesson 2 Body-Subject: Phantom Limbs and the Schneider Case This lesson analyzes two cases Merleau-Ponty uses to show that neither physiology nor psychology alone can explain the lived body: the phantom limb and the patient Schneider… 61111h 3m
- Lesson 3 Body-Subject: Habit and Incorporation This lesson explains Merleau-Ponty's account of habit as a kind of knowledge "in the hands," and how skilled use incorporates instruments, such as a cane, a car, or a keyboard… 611111h 33m
Further reading
These are the primary texts behind the ideas in this module. Reading them is optional: explore the ones that match your interests. You don't need them to complete the module, which explains their key ideas. Each entry gives the recommended edition, free options where they exist, and where to buy or borrow it.
- Gallagher, Shaun. 2005. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Module focus: Chapter 1 (body schema and body image)
- Free: None.
- Publisher: Oxford University Press (paperback)
- Free companion: SEP, "Bodily Awareness" (de Vignemont), §3.2
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1945) 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London: Routledge.
- Module focus: Module 1: Preface, Introduction, and Part Two selections · Module 2: Part One, chs. 1–3 · Module 3: Part One, chs. 5–6, and Part Two, ch. 4
- Free: None. Landes prints the French pagination in the margin; cite by part and chapter so learners using Smith can follow along.
- Publisher: Routledge
- Free companion: SEP, "Maurice Merleau-Ponty" (Toadvine), §3 · IEP, "Merleau-Ponty, Maurice" (Reynolds)
- Romdenh-Romluc, Komarine. 2011. Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
- Module focus: The chapters on the body and on habit
- Free: None.
- Publisher: Routledge