ABSTRACT
Born in 1908, Merleau-Ponty was three years younger than Sartre. They first met at École normale supérieure. In 1929 Sartre passed the competitive exam Agrégation, the same year as Beauvoir, Nizan and Hyppolite, and a year after Aron. Merleau-Ponty passed it in 1930. They belong to what can be called a generation (Sirinelli 1988). Although it is made up of numerous figures, the group stands out as a generation per se through its breaking away from national philosophical traditions, and also from the prominent figures of the time, among whom were Brunschvicg and Bergson. Despite their opposition, these two figures embody the “spiritualism” that French philosophy nurtures (Worms 2009), and the close link which still bound philosophy to psychological sciences back then. The new generation considers German phenomenology, in which the terms “consciousness” and “existence” prevail, a subversive and radical branch that shifts the center of gravity of philosophical discourse and clears up the connection with empirical psychology.
