Religion and Philosophy

This book explores the most important works of two authors of contemporary philosophy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a phenomenologist, and Gilbert Ryle, an analytic philosopher. The two share many interests in the field of philosophy of mind and perception, but represent distinct lines of research. Sâmara Costa compares the work of these two philosophers, and exposes the interest in both of showing that there are some problems in the use and clarification of important concepts for the study of perceptual experiences. Concepts that have become habitual in explanations of the experience and have crystallized into a language that no longer corresponds to the phenomenon itself. In addition to this conceptual analysis, Costa shows that there is also, in both authors, an attempt to make a phenomenology of the concept, obviously in connection with the lived experience.