Thinking the Body: Sexual Difference in Philosophy An Examination of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Embodiment in \u3ci\u3ePhenomenology of Perception\u3c/i\u3e

Western Philosophy, for a very long time, concerned itself with the task of separating mind and body, reason and emotion, and thus men and women. As a result of women’s disallowance to participate in philosophy, philosophy remained a faculty of the mind and women were relegated to the home. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a 20th century French philosopher, brought philosophy back to the body with Phenomenology of Perception. In this text Merleau-Ponty offers a universal account of how humans experience embodiment. This paper examines not only Merleau-Ponty’s neglect, but also philosophy’s neglect of the female body: Merleau-Ponty assumes that the male body serves as the universal body, the touchstone for all descriptions of embodiment