Given Merleau-Ponty deemed it necessary to conclude PoP with a reflection on the nature of freedom tells us of the importance he placed on the idea. In this lecture then I want to do three specific things. Firstly, I will explain what Merleau-Ponty has to say about the experience of time. This is important because Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical defence of freedom is inseparable from the question of temporality. This runs counter to conventional accounts of freedom in philosophy – free will versus determinism – In the second section, I explain how Merleau-Ponty constructs an alternative account of freedom as a form of self-awareness. In the last section I outline Merleau-Ponty’s own theory of human freedom.
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