Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Ludwig Wittgenstein are two of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, yet their work is generally regarded as standing in contrast to one another. However, as this outstanding collection demonstrates they both reject a Cartesian picture of the mind and sought to offer an alternative that does justice to the role played by bodily action, language, and our membership within a community that shares a way of life. This is the first collection to compare and contrast the work of these two major philosophers. Fundamental topics and problems discussed include the role of community in their philosophies; Merleau-Ponty on description and depiction and Wittgenstein on saying and doing; the role of language; their treatment of expression; their relation to the philosophy of the Vienna Circle; solipsism; and rule-following. It is essential reading for anyone studying the work of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, as well as those interested in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.

In the first in-depth philosophical study of the subject, Nicholas Gier examines the published and unpublished writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, to show the striking parallels between Wittgenstein and phenomenology. Between 1929 and 1933, the philosopher proposed programs that bore a detailed resemblance to dominant themes in the phenomenology of Husserl and some "life-world" phenomenologists. This sound, thoroughly readable study examines how and why he eventually moved away from it. Gier demonstrates, however, that Wittgenstein's phenomenology continues as his "grammar" of the post-1933 works, which continue to present instructive parallels with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.

In Words, Deeds, Bodies, Jerry H. Gill seeks to connect the thought of L. Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, M. Merleau-Ponty, and M. Polanyi in relation to the intersection between language and embodiment.

This volume of new essays explores the relationship between the thought of Wittgenstein and the key figures of phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. It is the first book to provide an overview of how Wittgenstein’s philosophy in its different phases, including his own so-called phenomenological phase, relates to the variety of phenomenological approaches developed in continental Europe. In so doing, the volume seeks to throw light on both sides of the comparison, and to clarify more broadly the relations between analytic and phenomenological philosophy. However, rather than treating the interpretation of either phenomenological philosophy or Wittgenstein as an already settled issue, several chapters in the volume examine and question received views regarding them, and develop alternatives to such views. Wittgenstein and Phenomenology will be of interest to scholars working in philosophical methodology and metaphilosophy, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and logic, and ethics.

The philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and the later Wittgenstein are shown to yield a common position opposing 'realist' attempts to reduce appearance, sense, and meaning to perception-independent objects and relations. Their 'Gestalt Philosophy' thus constitutes a new form of 'anti- realism'.

The aim of this study is to show how the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and the later Wittgenstein serve to establish, in very similar ways, (1) that subjects (persons) and what is subject-dependent, or in short, 'subjectivity', must be categorically distinguished from objects and what is subject-independent, or in short 'objectivity' and (2) that the 'sense' of the world as perceived, including linguistic sense, is a matter of the appearance of things and is therefore perception-dependent, and as such is in the category of subjectivity, not objectivity. The first claim is established not only by a study of the content of the arguments of the two philosophers, but also by a study of the form of their arguments: the kind of fallacy detection they deploy against their opponents exploits a logic dictated by the subject matter. In the course of examining a wide range of issues in meta- physics, epistemology, and the philosophies of mind, language, and mathematics, the 'Gestalt Philosophy' of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty can be seen to constitute a new sort of 'anti-realism'.