Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression

Donald A. Landes is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.

• Acknowledgments \ Abbreviations \ Introduction – The Paradoxical Logic of Expression \ 1. Against the Establishment: Early Hints of an Expressive Logic \ 2. Expression and The Structure of Behavior \ 3. Expression and Phenomenology of Perception \ 4. The Politics of Expression \ 5. The Threads of Silence: Painting, Speaking, Writing \ 6. Painting Ontology \ Epilogue \ Bibliography \ Index

Don Landes gives us a new reading of Merleau-Ponty, at once wondrously insightful, compelling, and rigorous, that shows how expression and creativity are at the heart of his philosophy. In doing so, Landes makes a deep and lasting contribution to Merleau-Ponty scholarship, by revealing a developing unity across Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, from start to finish, and linking Merleau-Ponty’s views of expression and the body to their philosophical context, especially to Gabriel Marcel and Léon Brunschvicg. But Landes also makes an original contribution by showing how Merleau-Pontian expression fruitfully connects to the studies of the genesis of meaning in Gilbert Simondon and Jean-Luc Nancy, and how a Merleau-Pontian phenomenology of expression speaks to current philosophical concerns.