Books by Timothy Mooney
Cambridge University Press, 2022
This is an advanced introduction to and an original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s greatest wo... more This is an advanced introduction to and an original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s greatest work. The reader is brought from the outset into the Kantian and Phenomenological traditions that Merleau-Ponty builds on in his existential philosophy of embodied perception, with this study demonstrating the centrality of the theory of the body schema in Phenomenology of Perception. Thanks to the schema’s motor intentionality our bodies inhabit and appropriate space. Our postures and perceptual fields are organised schematically when we move to realise our projects. In our actions this sub-conscious or operative intentionality functions in an integral union with our conscious or act intentionality. The theory of motor projection is fully compatible with the view that, as agents, we are at one with the bodies expressing our agency. It is shown that in Merleau-Ponty’s account our lived bodies are ineliminably expressive in being animated and outcome oriented through-and-through.
Routledge, 2002
This reader aims to make accessible to the English-Speaking world a representative selection of t... more This reader aims to make accessible to the English-Speaking world a representative selection of translations of primary readings of the phenomenological tradition, perhaps the most broadly influential movement of European Philosophy in the twentieth century. Phenomenology was inspired by the descriptive psychology formulated and practiced by Franz Brentano, and was inaugurated by Edmund Husserl in his breakthrough work Logical Investigations (1900/01). This radical method of approaching problems attracted some of the best minds of the modern age, and in one form or another it engaged with most of the competing philosophical currents of the era. The Phenomenology Reader constitutes the most comprehensive collection of primary texts from in this philosophical tradition that has been published to date. In presenting many of the core ideas expounded by the great phenomenologists themselves, it provides a first-hand account of the birth, consolidation and evolution of the movement. The editors have provided clear and accessible introductions to the all the thinkers and selections, together with up to date bibliographies of the primary and secondary literature.
Miscellaneous by Timothy Mooney
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was... more Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. While less well-known than his contemporaries Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, his popularity has increased among philosophers in recent years. Merleau-Ponty rejected Rene Descartes' division between body and mind, arguing that the way we perceive the world around us cannot be separated from our experience of inhabiting a physical body. Merleau-Ponty was interested in the down-to-earth question of what it is actually like to live in the world. While performing actions as simple as brushing our teeth or patting a dog, we shape the world and, in turn, the world shapes us.
Never quite eclipsed by other and more fashionable approaches, the account of engaged awareness s... more Never quite eclipsed by other and more fashionable approaches, the account of engaged awareness set out in Phenomenology of Perception has come back into its own in recent years. The new movements of embodied and situated cognition owe much to it, and their leading proponents have been careful to acknowledge its importance. 1 In his magnum opus Maurice Merleau-Ponty exploits both physiology and psychology in the service of his project. He also draws on the diverse expressions
International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2015
A pivotal influence on modern European philosophies of interpretation and existence, Dilthey diff... more A pivotal influence on modern European philosophies of interpretation and existence, Dilthey differentiates the human sciences of understanding from the natural sciences of explanation. He explicates life as a flow of lived experience and as an individual and socio-historical nexus of knowing, feeling and willing. In his middle period he sees descriptive psychology as the foundational approach for understanding lived experience, but subsequently emphasizes the hermeneutics or systematic interpretation of outer expressions of life, from politics and law to literature and architecture. His insights into the temporality, historicity and finitude of life are developed further in his philosophy of worldviews.
The Leuven Philosophy Newsletter 15, 2007
Book Chapters by Timothy Mooney
The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Mindfulness, 2023
Certain themes and conceptions in Merleau-Ponty’s later writings that overlap with the theory and... more Certain themes and conceptions in Merleau-Ponty’s later writings that overlap with the theory and practice of mindfulness can also be found in his earlier work. Though he regards the essentially embodied subject as a projective and self-transformative existent, he also sees many of our projects as solicited by things themselves with their unique perceptual styles. He proffers a kind of mindfulness that evokes much of the magic and wonder of childhood.
Perception and the Inhuman Gaze. Routledge, 2020
The contemporary notion of perception proper as directed towards the fully scientific image has b... more The contemporary notion of perception proper as directed towards the fully scientific image has been popularised by Paul and Patricia Churchland and was foreshadowed by Richard Avenarius. This approach has the remarkable aim of overcoming what it characterises as our neolithic legacy. With a dramatic shift in and expansion of human perceptual consciousness, we shall at last be in contact with true being. A phenomenological response will point to the indispensability of the lived world or lifeworld within which experience and knowledge take root and grow. In this light it can show that the eliminativist gaze is and must be a transient one. Any perceiver who is able to negotiate a world and who is motivated to do so works with beliefs that cannot be jettisoned and that are eminently justified. Two such fundamental beliefs - that the world is a realm of possibilities and that some of these are for oneself and some for others - are inseparable from one’s awareness of agency and bodily gearing into the macroscopic milieu.
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Books by Timothy Mooney
Miscellaneous by Timothy Mooney
Book Chapters by Timothy Mooney