Who Is Maurice Merleau-Ponty? Age, Biography, and Wiki
Born on March 14, 1908, Maurice Merleau-Ponty would be 117 years old in 2025, had he been alive. Renowned for his exploration of human perception, he has profoundly influenced fields like psychology, sociology, and cognitive sciences. His philosophical works, notably "Phenomenology of Perception," challenge traditional notions of the body and consciousness.
| Occupation | Philosophers |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | March 14, 1908 |
| Age | 53 Years |
| Birth Place | Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure, France |
| Horoscope | Pisces |
| Country | France |
| Date of death | 3 May, 1961 |
| Died Place | Paris, France |
Popularity
Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Popularity over time
Height, Weight & Measurements
While physical attributes are not typically emphasized in philosophical discourse, Merleau-Ponty was known to possess an engaging presence. For the sake of context, one could assume he was of average height for a French male of his era, with estimates placing his height around 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm). His weight was around 150 lbs (68 kg), but these figures are speculative and not documented rigorously in biographical records.
Family, Dating & Relationship Status (Boyfriend/Girlfriend/Husband/Wife)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was married to the French philosopher and writer, Suzanne Merleau-Ponty. The couple shared a life filled with intellectual companionship, although details about their relationship remain less documented. His personal life, including potential relationships outside this marriage, has been a subject of intrigue, but no credible evidence suggests any significant affairs or romantic involvements.
His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Jean Hyppolite, and Jean Wahl.
As Beauvoir recounts in her autobiography, she developed a close friendship with Merleau-Ponty and became smitten with him, but ultimately found him too well-adjusted to bourgeois life and values for her taste. He attended Edmund Husserl's "Paris Lectures" in February 1929.
In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree (, roughly equivalent to a M.A. thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin ("Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930.
Net Worth and Salary
As a philosopher, Merleau-Ponty's monetary worth is challenging to estimate, especially decades after his death. During his career, he earned a modest salary through his teaching roles at universities such as the Collège de France, focusing less on wealth accumulation and more on intellectual contributions. As of 2025, his estate holds an intellectual legacy rather than significant financial value.
Career, Business, and Investments
Merleau-Ponty's career spanned several decades, primarily as an educator and writer. He became a prominent figure in phenomenology, significantly impacted by and contributing to the existentialist movement alongside contemporaries like Jean-Paul Sartre. His writings continue to inspire various fields, pushing forward the understanding of human perception, embodiment, and the intertwining of self and world, far beyond conventional philosophical boundaries.
Merleau-Ponty engaged with Marxism throughout his career. His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely understood as defense of the Moscow Trials.
Slavoj Zizek opines that it avoids the definitive endorsement of a view on the Soviet Union, but instead engages with the Marxist theory of history as a critique of liberalism, in order to reveal an unresolved antinomy in modern politics, between humanism and terror: if human values can only be achieved through violent force, and if liberal ideas h
ide illiberal realities, how is just political action to be decided?
Social Network
In 2025, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's influence can still be felt across various social networks and academic platforms, as scholars and students engage with his works. Various online forums, social media discussions, and educational platforms frequently highlight and analyze his theories. His legacy is preserved and disseminated via dedicated groups on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where philosophy enthusiasts converge to delve into his remarkable insights.
Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an ex post facto abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are arrived at only after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given.
The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, to institute a "return to the phenomena".
Education
Merleau-Ponty’s education is a testament to his profound intellectual journey. He attended the École Normale Supérieure, where he was exposed to the works of major philosophers, which shaped his critical thinking and philosophical inquiries. His academic background laid the groundwork for his future contributions and established him as a leading philosopher in his field.
In the spring of 1939, he was the first foreign visitor to the newly established Husserl Archives, where he consulted Husserl's unpublished manuscripts and met Eugen Fink and Herman Van Breda. In the summer of 1939, as France declared war on Nazi Germany, he served on the frontlines in the French Army, where he was wounded in battle in June 1940.
Upon returning to Paris in the fall of 1940, he married Suzanne Jolibois, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and founded an underground resistance group with Jean-Paul Sartre called "Under the Boot". He participated in an armed demonstration against the Nazi forces during the liberation of Paris.
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952. He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a chair.
