Maurice Merleau-Ponty's early works develop from two pivotal theses: firstly, that perception is fundamental to all acts of consciousness and thereby knowledge and so is essential to all epistemic endeavours; secondly, that consciousness is embodied. Body is both the condition and the context for consciousness and is the threshold whereby the subject knows and has purchase in the world as an agent. Merleau-Ponty sums up his aims in An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Prospectus of His Work: