In a Working Note to The Visible from May 1959, Merleau-Ponty condensed some of his enduring philosophical concerns. His commitment to «making the history of philosophy into a perception of history» stands out, which confirms his belief that the history of thought prefigures the larger issues posed by any wide-ranging historiography. This paper attempts to appraise whether, and to what extent, Merleau-Ponty’s thought fulfilled this life-long aspiration. It explores his peculiar approach to the historiography of thought, stressing his views on the interdependence of all philosophies, their diacritic and perception-like relationship with each other, and above all the heterological mindset that commands his inquiry. Then the focus shifts to the sweeping holistic standpoint that supports his postulate of a «primordial historicity», proving that his forays into the history of thought reverberate in his account of history at large. Though in an unsystematic way, MerleauPonty’s philo-perceptive compromise resurfaces in the enigmatic synchronism evinced by the thought of all epochs and whose ultimate origin is the embodied faculty of meaning-giving.