In this book, Emmanuel Alloa offers a handrail for venturing into the complexities of the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61). Through a comprehensive analysis of the three main phases of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking and a thorough knowledge of his many unpublished manuscripts, the author traces how Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy evolved and exposes the remarkable coherence that structures it from within. Alloa teases out the continuity of a motive that traverses the entire oeuvre as a common thread. Merleau-Ponty struggled incessantly against any kind of ideology of transparency, whether of the world, of the self, of knowledge, or of the self s relation to others.Already translated into several languages, Alloa s innovative reading of this crucially important thinker shows why the issues Merleau-Ponty raised are, more than ever, those of our time.