PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, France. Drawn to philosophy from a young age, Merleau-Ponty would go on to study alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Simone Weil at the famous Ecole Normale Superieure. He completed a Docteur es lettres based on two dissertations, La structure du comportement (1942) and Phenomenologie de la perception (1945). After a brief post at the University of Lyon, Merleau-Ponty returned to Paris in 1949 when he was awarded the Chair of Psychology and Pedagogy at the Sorbonne. In 1952 he became the youngest philosopher ever appointed to the prestigious Chair of Philosophy at the College de France. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 aged fifty-three, at the height of his career. He is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
