Perception, Expression, and History : The Social Phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty

In this commentary, John O'Neill concentrates upon three themes in the goal Merleau-Ponty set for himself, namely to restore to things their concrete physiognomy, to organisms their individual ways of dealing with the world, and to subjectivity its inherence in history. O'Neill considers the three objectives in their original order: first, the study of animal and human psychology; then, the phenomenology of perception; and finally, certain extensions of these perspectives in the historical and social sciences.