Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Analytic Philosophy
- Part II Continental Philosophy
- Section Five Central Movements and Issues
- 26 Existentialism
- 27 Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Freedom
- 28 Heidegger, Critical Theory, and the Critique of Technology
- 29 Authenticity and Social Critique
- 30 Hermeneutics in Post-War Continental European Philosophy
- 31 Feminist Philosophy since 1945
- 32 Philosophies of Difference
- Section Six Continental Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy
- Section Seven Continental Aesthetics and Philosophy of Religion
- Part III Bridge Builders, Border Crossers, Synthesizers, and Comparative Philosophy
- Part IV Epilogue: On the Philosophy of the History of Philosophy
- References
- Index
27 - Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Freedom
from Section Five - Central Movements and Issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2019
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Analytic Philosophy
- Part II Continental Philosophy
- Section Five Central Movements and Issues
- 26 Existentialism
- 27 Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Freedom
- 28 Heidegger, Critical Theory, and the Critique of Technology
- 29 Authenticity and Social Critique
- 30 Hermeneutics in Post-War Continental European Philosophy
- 31 Feminist Philosophy since 1945
- 32 Philosophies of Difference
- Section Six Continental Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy
- Section Seven Continental Aesthetics and Philosophy of Religion
- Part III Bridge Builders, Border Crossers, Synthesizers, and Comparative Philosophy
- Part IV Epilogue: On the Philosophy of the History of Philosophy
- References
- Index
Summary
Freedom was the central problem and preoccupation of French existentialism – not only of its central figure, Jean-Paul Sartre, but also of his sometime intellectual friend and rival, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. They had in common what they inherited from their immediate German predecessors – from Edmund Husserl a commitment to phenomenology as a method of inquiry, from Martin Heidegger a conviction that traditional philosophy had failed to take seriously the existential sources of its own questions and concepts. Like Husserl and Heidegger, they were critics of theoretical abstraction and scholastic refinement, champions of the concrete, eager to remind philosophical reflection of its groundedness in what Sartre called the “pre-reflective cogito” (cogito préréflexif), or as Merleau-Ponty said, translating literally from the German Erlebnis, “lived experience” (l’expérience vécue).1
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015 , pp. 365 - 374Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019