In March 1998 the University of Milano organized and hosted a conference on "The Heritage of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy in Contemporary Thought" that assembled specialists from the whole world. The fruitful and rigorous confrontation that ensued in summarized in this volume, which collects the conference proceeding and other contributions on the same theme in a trilingual edition (French, English and Italian). With this volume therefore we inaugurate the international version of the journal Chiasmi, now named Chiasmi International, co-published by the Associazione culturale Mimesis (Milan), by the Librairie philosophique J. Vrin (Paris), and by the University of Memphis. It concerns not only Merleau-Ponty’s works, but also the thinking that stars with and develops around Merleau-Ponty. Texts by: Renaud Barbaras, Rudolf bernet, Patrick Burke, Daniela calabrò, Mauro Carbone, Pierre Cassou-Nogues, Maurizio Ferraris, Elio Franzini, Paolo Gambazzi, Nicoletta Grillo, Koji Hirose, Giovanni Invitto, Leonard Lawlor, David Michael Levin, Enrica Lisciani-Petrini, David Morris, Mario Teodoro Ramirez Cobian, Bernhard Waldenfels. Renaud Barbaras is Professeur at Universite Blaise Pascal Clermont-Ferrand, France. Mauro Carbone is an Assistant Professor at the State University of Milano, Italy Leonard Lawlor is Associate Professor at the University of Memphis, USA