Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenological Body and some Interpretive Challenges

This paper discusses the meaning of the body in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. At firs t, I address two challenges raised for interpreting the body in this book. Then I develop a framework for unders tanding Merleau-Ponty’s conception of body. This framework involves a negative and a positive aspect, and will be introduced from four perspectives (i.e. an epis temological, an ontological, a spatial and a temporal perspective). In particular, according to the negative aspect, the body is not an object. On the other hand, from epis temological perspective, the body is our point of view to objects. From the ontological perspective, the body is an organism intended to get the maximum grip on its world. In addition, the body is our spatio -temporal horizon to the world. Finally, with this framework on the table, I try to shed a new light on the two interpretive challenges.