Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty

The French philosopher Renaud Barbaras remarked that late in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's career, "e;The phenomenology of perception fulfills itself as a philosophy of expression."e; In Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty: Aesthetics, Philosophy of Biology, and Ontology, Veronique M. Fotiaddresses the guiding yet neglected theme of expression in Merleau-Ponty's thought. She traces Merleau-Ponty's ideas about how individuals express creative or artistic impulses through his three essays on aesthetics, his engagement with animality and the "e;new biology"e; in the second of his lecture courses on nature of 1957-58, and in his late ontology, articulated in 1964 in the fragmentary text of Le visible et l'invisible (The Visible and the Invisible). With the exception of a discussion of Merleau-Ponty's 1945 essay "e;Cezanne's Doubt,"e; Foti engages with Merleau-Ponty's late and final thought, with close attention to both his scientific and philosophical interlocutors, especially the continental rationalists. Expression shows itself, in Merleau-Ponty's thought, to be primordial, and this innate and fundamental nature of expression has implications for his understanding of artistic creation, science, and philosophy.