In her second major essay, renowned French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir illustrates the ethics of existentialism by outlining a series of 'ways of being'. In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism...

"In Merleau-Ponty and Nishida, Adam Loughnane initiates a dialogue between two of the twentieth century's most important phenomenologists from the Eastern and Western philosophical worlds. Loughnane guides the reader through the complexities and innovations of Nishida's and Merleau-Ponty's theories of artistic expression and their rarely explored concepts of faith. The intricacies of both philosophers' views are illuminated by analyses of artists,...

"In The Birth of Sense, Don Beith proposes a new concept of generative passivity, the idea that our organic, psychological, and social activities take time to develop into sense. More than being a limit, passivity marks out the way in which organisms, persons, and interbodily systems take time in order to manifest a coherent sense. Beith situates his argument within contemporary debates about evolution, developmental biology, scientific causal explanations,...

One of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Merleau-Ponty's theories of perception and the role of the body have had an enormous impact on the humanities and social sciences. The full scope of his contribution not only to phenomenology but philosophy generally is explained and assessed in this volume.

"This diverse collection looks at the contemporary relevance of the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to environmental issues and builds a coherent philosophical ecology based on his thought. The contributors describe and analyze relations within the natural world by focusing on the centrality of relations in Merleau-Ponty's work; his concept of the bond between humanity and nature; and his novel philosophies of perception, embodiment, and "wild"...