1. See Theodore Geraets, Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendantale: La Genèse de la philosophie de Maurice Merleau-Ponty jusqu’à la Phénoménologie de la perception (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), in particular pp. 28–31, 137–46. Of Merleau-Ponty’s three extant letters to Fink from after World War II (January 20, 1951, June 29, 1959, and September 13, 1960) in the Fink Nachlass, in the first he writes that he had “read the works you published (and even the `Sixth Cartesian Meditation’) while you were with Husserl” and that it was Sartre “who a long time ago had directed me to your article in Kantstudien.” Merleau-Ponty goes on to speak of the wish he has long had in knowing “the direction your personal reflection would be taking, so close to and yet so different from Husserl’s.” He explains too that it is not just Fink the “commentator on Husserl,” but also the “original philosopher” that he saw in those early publications. On Merleau-Ponty’s reading of the “Sixth Cartesian Meditation,” see p. 177 below. See, too, the reference to Fink’s pre- 1940 writings below on pp. 176–7.
2. That is, a study similar to Theodore Kisiel’s massive tracing of the piecing of threads by which Heidegger wove his Sein and Zeit, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), might also be done for Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception. A substantial measure of this is already provided by Geraets, Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendantale.
3. H. L. Van Breda, "Maurice Merleau-Ponty et les Archives-Husserl à Louvain," Revue de métaphysique et de morale 67 (Oct.-Dec., 1962), 410-30
4. "Merleau-Ponty and the Husserl Archives at Louvain," trans. Stephen Michelman, in Texts and Dialogues,ed. Hugh J. Silverman and James Barry Jr. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1992), 150-61 [cited hereafter as "Archives," with French preceding English pagination].
5. Archives,“ 413/152, my translation.