In the Preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau– Ponty gives a concise and persuasive account of what he believes to be the major strengths of the phenomenological approach to philosophical problems. He contends that it is legitimate for phenomenology to ‘be practised and identified as a manner or style of thinking’ since it, in fact, ‘existed as a movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a philosophy’. This sense of phenomenology, not as a narrow or doctrinaire theoretical school, but as a flexible and creative intellectual approach, is confirmed by Merleau–Ponty's concluding remarks, in which he argues that it

While these loosely connected, general statements give a helpful picture of the projected method of phenomenological investigation, of the adaptability of the philosopher's conceptual tools and of his resistance to the rigid categorization of various kinds of exploratory scheme, it is important to identify the concrete content of characteristically phenomenological undertakings. Phenomenology marks a unique moment in recent philosophical effort, one in which an entire tradition of scholarly enquiry is first set aside, and then reinstated on modified – and, if the project is unsuccessful, more rigorous – terms.