Abstract
The main purpose of M. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology was to stop the fruitless dispute between materialism and idealism, to re-learn seeing the world, and to restore the naive contact with the world. Apparently this phenomenology suggests a unique viewpoint in understanding the existence of 'child'. We can find this viewpoint more directly expounded in his lectures on child psychology and pedagogy held at the Sorbonne. This paper, focusing on these lectures, examines the characteristic points and the meaning of these lectures.
Merleau-Ponty proposes a phenomenological child psychology in contrast to child psychology as a positivistic science and he treats pedagogy also as synonymous with phenomenological child psychology. He emphasises the importance of the lived existential relation between the child and the adult which we are apt to miss by objectifying 'child' as the object of positivistic or scientific knowledge.
If we dare to attach a name to attempt at phenomenology, we may call it phenomenology of 'child and adult'. It includes a notion of protest against the one-way theory of stages of development from child to adult, and it seems to suggest that human development should be considered only in terms of the structure of co-existence of child and adult.
