The Body and Embodiment: A Philosophical Guide

Description

Perfect for use at advanced undergraduate and graduate level, this is the first text to offer students a unified narrative regarding the place of the body in Western thinking. The book investigates the ways in which the fact of human embodiment makes the notion of ambiguity central to all major areas of philosophy. The body is both active and passive, powerful and vulnerable, and it provides both access through perception and limitation through localisation. As such, it fundamentally informs ontological, political, ethical and epistemological issues. The book takes as its starting point the devaluation of the body by philosophers from Plato to Descartes and then focuses on several dimensions of the body as investigated by post-Kantian philosophy through a discussion of the intentional body, embodied cognition and the politicization of the body. The book engages with both the 'Continental' and 'Anglo-American' philosophical traditions and includes a broad range of sources and texts. The unified approach and clear writing make this lively text accessible to those working in other disciplines such as Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Gender Studies. Contents Acknowledgements Ch01. Introduction P A R T I. FOUNDATIONS AND PARADIGM Ch02. The Irreducibility of the Body 1: Plato Ch03. The Irreducibility of the Body 2: Augustine Ch04. Descartes and the Interaction Problem P A R T I I. AN EMBODIED WORLD Ch05. Husserl and the Phenomenology of the Lived Body Ch06. Merleau-Ponty and the Embodied World Ch07. Merleau-Ponty and the “Unmotivated Springing Forth of the World” Ch08. Embodied Cognition P A R T I I I. POLITICAL BODIES Ch09. The Body Politic Ch10. Alienation and Micro-Power Ch11. Race, Visibility and Power Ch12. Female Disempowerment Conclusion Glossary Bibliography Index