We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is absent—forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured.

Bodily pain and distress come in many forms. They can well up from within at times of serious illness, but the body can also be subjected to harsh treatment from outside. The medical system is often cold and depersonalized, and much worse are conditions experienced by prisoners in our age of mass incarceration, and by animals trapped in our factory farms. In this pioneering book, Drew Leder offers bold new ways to rethink how we create and treat distress, clearing (...) the way for more humane social practices. Leder draws on literary examples, clinical and philosophical sources, his medical training, and his own struggle with chronic pain. He levies a challenge to the capitalist and Cartesian models that rule modern medicine. Similarly, he looks at the root paradigms of our penitentiary and factory farm systems and the way these produce distressed bodies, asking how such institutions can be reformed. Writing with coauthors ranging from a prominent cardiologist to long-term inmates, he explores alternative environments that can better humanize—even spiritualize—the way we treat one another, offering a very different vision of medical, criminal justice, and food systems. Ultimately Leder proposes not just new answers to important bioethical questions but new ways of questioning accepted concepts and practices. (shrink)

This is the first volume to systematically explore the range of contemporary thought concerning the body and draw out its crucial implications for medicine.

My argument here is principally that the ubiquity of epistemics is evident in the ways in which knowledge claims and attributions of knowledge to self and other are embedded in turns and sequences, inform the design of turns at talk, are amended in the corrections that speakers sometimes make, to change from one epistemic stance to another, and are contested, in the occasional ‘struggles’ between participants, as to which of them has epistemic primacy. I show that these cannot be understood (...) in cognitive terms; furthermore, I show that epistemics – again the attribution of knowledge to self and other – is ‘real’ for participants. That is, in these four practices and aspects of interaction it is evident that participants orient to their states of knowledge relative to one another, on a moment-by-moment, turn-by-turn basis. (shrink)

The option of being ‘spiritual but not religious’ deserves much more philosophical attention. That is the aim here, taking the work of Robert Solomon as a starting point, with focus on the particular issues around viewing life as gift. This requires analysis of ‘existential gratitude’ to show that there can be gratitude for things without gratitude to someone for providing things, and also closer attention to the role that metaphor plays in cognition. I consider two main concerns with gift and (...) gratitude thinking, that the nonreligious justification is too instrumentalist in its approach and that viewing life as gift, whether in a religious or nonreligious way, is simply too optimistic. (shrink)

I argue that clinical medicine can best be understood not as a purified science but as a hermeneutical enterprise: that is, as involved with the interpretation of texts. The literary critic reading a novel, the judge asked to apply a law, must arrive at a coherent reading of their respective texts. Similarly, the physician interprets the text of the ill person: clinical signs and symptoms are read to ferret out their meaning, the underlying disease. However, I suggest that the hermeneutics (...) of medicine is rendered uniquely complex by its wide variety of textual forms. I discuss four in turn: the experiential text of illness as lived out by the patient; the narrative text constituted during history-taking; the physical text of the patient's body as objectively examined; the instrumental text constructed by diagnostic technologies. I further suggest that certain flaws in modern medicine arise from its refusal of a hermeneutic self-understanding. In seeking to escape all interpretive subjectivity, medicine has threatened to expunge its primary subject — the living, experiencing patient. (shrink)

The lived body has structures of ability built up over time through habit. Serious illness, injury, and incapacity can disrupt these capacities, and thereby, one’s relationship to the body, and to time itself. This paper focuses attention on a series of healing strategies individuals then employ on the “chessboard” of possibilities intrinsic to lived embodiment. This can include restoring past abilities (pointing to the future to recreate the past); and/or transforming one’s bodily structure or use-patterns, or the external environment, to (...) compensate. With many conditions, including progressive aging, no full rehabilitation is possible. Nevertheless, one can also seek consolation, richness, or hope by remembering the past; anticipating the future; or presencing, that is, living fully in the now. Insofar as past, present, and future are interwoven in one’s life experience, many also meet adversity by a life-story revision, constructing a new narrative to render events meaningful. Some also access a sense of transpersonal timelessness, whether through anticipation of an afterlife, or a sense of the eternal present. There is a literature on the adaptive coping mechanism used by the chronically ill, but with its diverse patient populations, methodologies, and categories, it has proved difficult to systematize. This article suggests that the structures of lived embodiment, as explored by phenomenology, provide a way to understand the modes of wholeness individuals access over time, and in relation to time—what is here termed chronic healing. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s sustained reflection on Greek thought has been increasingly recognized as a decisive feature of his own philosophical development. At the same time, this important philosophical meeting has generated considerable controversy and disagreement concerning the radical originality of Heidegger’s view of the Greeks and their place in his groundbreaking thinking. In Heidegger and the Greeks, an international group of distinguished philosophers sheds light on the issues raised by Heidegger’s encounter and engagement with the Greeks. The careful and nuanced essays (...) brought together here shed light on how core philosophical concepts such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and ethics are understood today. For readers at all levels, this volume is an invitation to continue the important dialogue with Greek thinking that was started and stimulated by Heidegger. Contributors are Claudia Baracchi, Walter A. Brogan, Günter Figal, Gregory Fried, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Drew A. Hyland, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, William J. Richardson, John Sallis, Dennis J. Schmidt, and Peter Warnek. (shrink)

Drew A. Hyland, one of Continental philosophy's keenest interpreters of Plato, takes up the question of beauty in three Platonic dialogues, the Hippias Major, Symposium, and Phaedrus. What Plato meant by beauty is not easily characterized, and Hyland's close readings show that Plato ultimately gives up on the possibility of a definition. Plato's failure, however, tells us something important about beauty—that it cannot be reduced to logos. Exploring questions surrounding love, memory, and ideal form, Hyland draws out the connections (...) between beauty, the possibility of philosophy, and philosophical living. This new reading of Plato provides a serious investigation into the meaning of beauty and places it at the very heart of philosophy. (shrink)

In this important book, Drew Khlentzos explains the antirealist argument from a realist perspective. He defends naturalistic realism against the antirealist challenge, and he considers the consequences of his defense for our understanding of realism and truth. Khlentzos argues that the naturalistic realist view that the world exists independently of the mind must take into consideration what he calls the representation problem: if the naturalistic realist view is true, how can mental representation of the world be explained?He examines this (...) major antirealist challenge in detail and shows that many realists have dismissed it because they have not understood its nature. He sees it as a philosophical puzzle: the antirealist challenge, if sound, does not prove that there are no objects that exist independently of the mind, but that there is no rational basis for thinking that there are; we have good reason to believe in the naturalistic view, but we have no way of knowing how it could be true. Khlentzos surveys the antirealist arguments of Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, and Crispin Wright and suggests a realist answer. He argues for a radically nonepistemic conception of truth, and against pragmatist, intuitionist, verificationist, and pluralist alternatives. He examines and rejects some current versions of physicalism and functionalism, and offers an original version of the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

Dr. Drew A. Hyland traces the origins of philosophy from its earliest roots in Babylonian and Homeric-Hesiodic mythology to its flowering in the Pre-Socratic imagination. Using selections from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hesiod, Homer, Pythagoras, Zeno, Plato, and Socrates, to name but a few, Dr. Hyland argues against what he calls the "historical approach" to the origin of philosophy. In Hyland's view the differentiation of the human self from notions of God and nature may rightly be called the origin (...) of philosophy. The book's skilled intermingling of original source material, with commentaries by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, among others, and the author's own thought-provoking introduction, provides an invaluable study of this fascinating period in human intellectual development. (shrink)

Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews (1865 - 1935) war ein deutscher Philosoph, Schriftsteller und wichtiger Vertreter des deutschen Monismus. Während seiner Laufbahn schrieb er über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Religionen und Mythologie. Er provoziert oft Streit wegen seiner unorthodoxen Ideen über Religion und teilweise wegen seiner Angriffe auf Nietzsche und seiner leidenschaftlichen Unterstützung von Wagner. Drews gehört zu den bekanntesten deutschen Bestreitern der Existenz eines historischen Jesus. Er faßt das Problem der Religion als ein wesentlich methaphysisches auf und vertritt den Standpunkt (...) des Pantheismus gegenüber dem Theismus der bestehenden Religionen. Das vorliegende Buch, das Drews als eine philosophische Untersuchung über das Wesen der Religion untertitelt, ist sein systematisches Hauptwerk, das sich besonders gegen die herrschende Richtung der protestantischen Theologie wendet. Diese verwirft das christliche Dogma und etabliert eine historisch-hermeneutische Christentumwissenschaft, in der Jesus zum Prototyp der Individualität erhoben wird. Er zeigt, daß eine Weiterentwicklung der Religion und eine Gesundung der religiösen Zustände nicht durch ein Zurückschrauben der bisherigen Entwicklung zu ihrem Ausgangspunkt, sondern durch Fortbildung der in jenen enthaltenen Keime aus dem innersten Wesen der Religion heraus möglich ist. Sorgfältig bearbeiteter Nachdruck der Originalausgabe von 1906. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the paradigm of the lived-body developed by Straus, Merleau-Ponty and others has important implications for medical practice and theory. Certain recognized flaws in modern medicine, such as its reductionist tendencies and lack of emphasis on preventive measures are shown to be related to the exclusive use of a Cartesian notion of embodiment. Increased attention to the paradigm of the lived-body emphasizing its unity, purposiveness and "enworldment" could help to beneficially reorient practice. Moreover, this portrayal of the (...) body as an intentional entity may provide a better tool than the traditional view for conceptualizing the psychological and psychosocial components of disease etiology, as well as some newly developed modes of treatment. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The thesis of "token identity" or "token physicalism" advanced by fodor and others attempts to reconcile materialism with a non-Reductionist view of the special sciences. However, I argue that since the individual events or "tokens" of any science are only designated according to its general types, The former cannot be specified physicalistically while the latter are not. Though attempting to combat a positivistic view of the sciences, Fodor's thesis rests on a positivistic opposition of token and type.

In dem vorliegenden Werk hat sich der Philosoph Arthur Drews einem spannenden Kapitel antiker Philosophie gewidmet. Er richtet sein Augenmerk auf Plotin, Interpret der Lehre Platons und Begr nder des Neuplatonismus. Dabei spannt er den Bogen von der Entwicklung der antiken Philosophie vor Plotin bis zum Untergang der antiken Weltanschauung. Sorgf ltig bearbeiteter Nachdruck der Originalausgabe von 1907.

The article begins with a brief discussion of the ways in which Platonic irony, and specifically the irony of the Republic, has been interpreted : as part of Plato's liberary style, as a consequence of political or prudential considerations, and as a pedagogical technique. These are criticized as stopping short of an interpretation of irony which makes it part of Plato's philosophic intentions. Using several seminal examples of irony in the Republic, it is shown, 1) that Plato's philosophical irony is (...) often not dyadic but triadic, and 2) that such irony is Plato's way of presenting the philosophic issue of negativity, a negativity, it is argued, that is grounded in the nature of human eros. L'article commence avec une brève discussion des différentes façons dont l'ironie platonicienne et surtout l'ironie de la République a été interprétée : comme un aspect du style littéraire de Platon, comme conséquence de considérations politiques ou prudentielles, et comme technique pédagogique. Ces interprétations sont critiquées parce qu'elles tournent court : l'ironie fait ellemême partie des intentions philosophiques de Platon. Se servant de plusieurs exemples séminaux d'ironie dans la République il est démontré 1) que l'ironie platonicienne n'est souvent pas dyadique mais triadique, et 2) que l'ironie est le moyen pour Platon de présenter le thème philosophique de la négativité, une négativité, ici indiquée, fondée dans la nature de l'éros humain. (shrink)

Collecting the work of linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists, archaeologists, artificial intelligence researchers and philosophers this volume presents a richly varied picture of the nature and function of mental states. Starting from questions about the cognitive capacities of the early hominin homo floresiensis, the essays proceed to the role mental representations play in guiding the behaviour of simple organisms and robots, thence to the question of which features of its environment the human brain represents and the extent to which complex cognitive skills (...) such as language acquisition and comprehension are impaired when the brain lacks certain important neural structures. Other papers explore topics ranging from nativism to the presumed constancy of categorization across signed and spoken languages, from the formal representation of metaphor, actions and vague language to philosophical questions about conceptual schemes and colours. Anyone interested in mental states will find much to reward them in this fine volume. (shrink)

Pain is far more than an aversive sensation. Chronic pain, in particular, involves the sufferer in a complex experience filled with ambiguity and paradox. The tensions thereby established, the unknowns, pressures, and oscillations, form a significant part of the painfulness of pain. This paper uses a phenomenological method to examine nine such paradoxes. For example, pain can be both immediate sensation and mediated by complex interpretations. It is a certainty for the experiencer, yet highly uncertain in character. It pulls one (...) to the present but also projects one outward to a feared or desired future. Chronic pain can seem located in the body and/or mind; interior to the self, or an alien other; confined to a particular point and/or radiating everywhere. Such fundamental paradoxes, existential and epistemological, can challenge those living with long-term pain. (shrink)

Much has been made of the so-called “empirical turn” of “speculative materialism” with thinkers like Quentin Meillassoux championing the material sciences as a new route to absolute reality. According to Meillassoux, the material sciences “provide philosophers access once again to the great outdoors, the absolute outside,” of reality in-itself. One might expect from such encomia the attempt to engage with the products of contemporary science in order to develop a new metaphysics; but, Meillassoux spends almost no time in this way, (...) focusing instead on the form and methods of the material sciences over their actual accomplishments. As a result, his praise rings hollow and his metaphysics remains undeveloped. This paper examines what would happen if we were to take seriously his claims that a new metaphysics be developed from a scientific accounting of material reality by surveying the conclusions of contemporary physics. The paper ends by contrasting such a new speculative and materialistic metaphysics with the speculative nihilism of Ray Brassier. (shrink)

Excerpt from Kants Naturphilosophie als Grundlage Seines Systems Die vorliegende Arbeit uber die kantische Naturphilosophie war ursprunglich in Aussicht genommen als erstes Kapitel einer Darstellung der deutschen Naturphilosophie seit Kam. Der Grund, warum sie zu einem selbstandigen Werke angeschwollen ist, liegt darin, weil ich bei genauerem Studium des Philosophen fand, man habe das naturphilosophische Element in den Schriften Kants bisher bei weitem unterschatzt und insbesondere seinen Bemuhungen um eine dynamische Theorie der Materie lange nicht diejenige Bedeutung zugeschrieben, die ihnen sowohl (...) in Hinsicht auf die Richtung, welche die kantische Gedankenentwickelung genommen hat, wie fur die eigentumliche Ausbildung dieser Gedanken im Einzelnen thatsachlich beizumessen ist. Man hat den Philosophen nach seiner theoretischen Seite fast lediglich als den Begrunder der modernen Erkenntnistheorie gewurdigt und dabei ubersehen, wie seine ganze Erkenntnistheorie aus naturphilosophischen Erwagungen hervorgegangen und oft in den wichtigsten Punkten von ihnen bestimmt worden ist. Die vorliegende Arbeit schopft nun bei der Hochflut der philosophischen Litteratur, die sich mit Kant beschaftigt, ihre Daseinsberechtigung vor allem daraus, dafs sie die gesamte theoretische Philosophie Kants unter dem Gesichtspunkte der Naturphilosophie betrachtet. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

Lucy Osler's piece, "Controlling the noise: A phenomenological account of Anorexia Nervosa and the threatening body," lays out an important new interpretation of anorexia. Anorexia Nervosa is no longer viewed as primarily a perceptual distortion of body-image, an obsession with thinness, or an attempt to dematerialize—to free the subject from its inert thing-like body. Rather, the body itself, and the visceral body in particular, takes on a "voice" which the anorexic experiences as demanding and threatening. Anorexic monitoring and self-starvation beckons (...) as a way to regain power over this renegade viscerality. Unfortunately, this strategy of self-empowerment is doomed to backfire; hunger, illness, and body/food... (shrink)

If we lack deep free agency, like that supposed by metaphysical libertarianism, should we view life as meaningless, pointless, or not worth living? Here I present a new argument in support of meaning-compatibilism, or the view that life can indeed be meaningful without our having deep free agency. I show that this argument secures meaning-compatibilism more effectively than an argument provided by Derk Pereboom. In the process, we learn that Susan Wolf’s hybrid theory of meaning in life is not equipped (...) to handle the question of meaning-compatibilism, which a broader approach to meaning in life should help us to grasp. On the alternative approach I present, judgments about meaning in life involve a sensitivity to whether giving up on life, or “agency defeat”, is justified. I argue that, so long as we are able to exist in reality, giving up on life is difficult to justify, and even without deep free agency, we do indeed exist in reality. (shrink)

Yael Lin's The Intersubjectivity of Time: Levinas and Infinite Responsibility is the first sustained inquiry into Emmanuel Levinas's theory of temporality, a concept which permeates his work and can in many ways serve as a lens through which his entire system can be examined and understood. As the first book length monograph on the subject, Lin's work promises to be of significant value to scholars of Levinas. The book proceeds by tracing what the author sees as the Western roots of (...) Levinas's theory of temporality, namely the works of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson, then goes on to explore the various limitations and problems of that philosophical lineage, before showing how Levinas's own theory responds to those limitations and problems by drawing from the Jewish philosophical tradition. (shrink)

The essays, lectures and reviews featured in this volume represent thinkers from Lukacs and Heidegger to Judith Butler and Slavoj Zižek.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) can serve as a beneficial public policy to reduce poverty and inequality, yet a great challenge is how to fund it. This article offers a roadmap for fully funding UBI in a manner that: eliminates poverty; bolsters the middle-class; eliminates the stigma and government bureaucracy of social welfare programs; reduces ever-expanding inequality; initiates a path to meeting climate change goals; reduces speculation; and increases fairness and opportunity in the tax code. As stand-alone policies, these revenue proposals (...) are valuable correctives in their own right. If the entire package of UBI and funding sources were in effect, society (and American capitalism) would be on a more stable, equitable, and environmentally sustainable footing. (shrink)

Encounters with illness, impairment, and aging can disrupt one’s experiential relationship with self, body, others, and world. “Healing” takes place when the individual is able to re-integrate his or her world, even if the condition is not medically curable. Drawing on work in the phenomenology of the body, this article examines a series of eight “healing strategies” individuals employ, each representing a different way of orienting toward the painful or impaired body. One may lean into freeing oneself from the body, (...) through strategies of “refusing,” “ignoring,” “objectifying,” or “transcending” its problems. Conversely, one may choose to embrace the body, through strategies such as “accepting,” “listening,” “befriending,” or “witnessing.” It can be beneficial to have a good number of such coping strategies at one’s disposal, enhancing flexible response to chronic challenges. They also are often used in synergistic or complementary combinations. (shrink)

We agree with Archer that human sex differences in aggression are well explained by sexual selection, but note that explanations of human behaviors are not logically mutually exclusive from explanations and therefore should not be framed as such. We discuss why this type of framing hinders the development of both social learning and evolutionary theories of human behavior.