 In 1951, Merleau-Ponty summarizes his research after Phenomenology as focused on a “theory of truth” exploring how knowledge and communication with others are “original formations with respect to perceptual life, but … also preserve and continue our perceptual life even while transforming it” (UMP: 41–42/287). Expression, language, and symbolism are the key to this theory of truth and provide the foundation for a philosophy of history and of “transcendental” humanity. Whereas the study of perception could only provide a “bad ambiguity” that mixes “finitude and universality”, Merleau-Ponty sees in the phenomenon of expression a “good ambiguity” that “gathers together the plurality of monads, the past and the present, nature and culture, into a single whole” (UMP: 48/290). Many of Merleau-Ponty’s courses from 1947 through 1953 at the University of Lyon, the Sorbonne, and the Collège de France focus on language, expression, and  literature.[6]