Language is the product of human’s discursive practice. It is bound to bear speakers’ feelings, attitudes and opinions toward events, that is, linguistic subjectivity (LS). However, the phenomenon of linguistic subjectivity (LS) cannot be fully unravelled by the existing single perspective of semantics, pragmatics, philosophy, or cognitive linguistics. To reveal the philosophical attribute and cognitive nature of linguistic subjectivity (LS), a model of integrating embodied philosophy and cognition of linguistic subjectivity (IEPCLS) was constructed, and a philosophical cognitive analysis (...) framework of linguistic subjectivity (LS) was proposed. By integrating the embodiment and non-objectivity of language meaning in embodied philosophy and the speaker’s self-orientation in cognitive linguistics, the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) was explored. The concrete realisation paths of the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) were investigated on the basis of the framework, and the feasibility of the model and framework was verified by taking discourse constructions as examples. The results show that linguistic subjectivity (LS) is the attribute of speakers as subjects and exists in the speaker’s realistic experience, the speaker’s self, and the speaker’s interaction and perception of the social communication context (SCC). The realisation paths of the philosophical and cognitive existence of linguistic subjectivity (LS) include the speaker’s self-expressions, the speaker’s meaning assignment to social communication context (SCC), and the speaker’s meaning interpretation of social communication context (SCC). The study provides references for interpreting the subjective factors behind discourse. (shrink)

This book examines the sensual and mental emphases of the movement research practiced by dancers of the Batsheva Dance Company and provides a comprehensive analysis of Gaga and Ohad Naharin's aesthetic approach.

[First paragraphs]: Einav Katan-Schmid’s thought-provoking new book, Embodied Philosophy of Dance, is composed of two related but at least partially separable components. Though the first (which dominates Part I of the book) contains original insights, most of it aligns with existing work in the reemerging philosophy of dance (including my own). This first component is, in essence, a hybrid dance theory derived from Katan-Schmid’s interpretations of central figures in the philosophical schools of phenomenology, hermeneutics and pragmatism (including Merleau-Ponty, (...) Gadamer, and Dewey). The second component, by contrast, is more original and provocative, and consists of Katan-Schmid’s analyses of choreographer Ohad Naharin’s Gaga method of movement research. It is thus to this second component that I will thus devote most of the present review. I will then conclude with a brief look at the recent biographical documentary on Naharin, entitled Mr. Gaga: A True Story of Love and Dance, focusing on elements that resonate with Embodied Philosophy of Dance. (shrink)

Exploring the risks, ambiguities, and unstable conceptual worlds of contemporary thought, Crossover Queries brings together the wide-ranging writings, across twenty years, of one of our most important philosophers.Ranging from twentieth-century European philosophy—the thought of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Levinas, Janicaud, and others—to novels and artworks, music and dance, from traditional Jewish thought to Jain andBuddhist metaphysics, Wyschogrod’s work opens radically new vistas while remaining mindful that the philosopher stands within and is responsible to a philosophical legacy conditioned by the negative.Rather (...) than point to a Hegelian dialectic of overcoming negation or to a postmetaphysical exhaustion, Wyschogrod treats negative moments as opening novel spaces for thought. She probes both the desire for God and an ethics grounded in the interests of the other person, seeing these as moments both of crossing over and of negation. Alert to the catastrophes that have marked our times, she exposes the underlying logical structures of nihilatory forces that have been exerted to exterminate whole peoples. Analyzing the negationsof biological research and cultural images of mechanized and robotic bodies, she shows how they contest the body as lived in ordinary experience.“Crossover Queries brings together important essays on a remarkable range of topics by one of our most insightful cultural critics. Commenting on philosophical and theological issues that have shaped the recent past as well as scientific and technological questions that will preoccupy us in the near future, Wyschogrod consistently alerts us to the urgency of problems whose importance few recognize. To avoid the challenge these essays pose is to avoid responsibility for a future that appears to be increasingly fragile.”—Mark C. Taylor, Columbia University. (shrink)

Reexamines the Western philosophical tradition, looking at the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self.

The body is not a physical reservoir or temporary means of cognitive processes but the part and parcel of our cognitive and moral life. Confucian philosophy provides insightful discussions and examples of how the body serves the moral mind not only causally but also constitutionally.

This book analyses some of the seminal texts of the Chinese tradition and shows how they exemplify aspects of embodiment theory: the Analects of Confucius, the Zhuangzi, and the Treatise on Music. Margus Ott also develops far-reaching possibilities of an embodied philosophy. The embodied understanding did not go unchallenged in Ancient China. There were important counter-currents, most notably the Mohists and the so-called Legalists. By using embodiment theory Ott demonstrates how these ideas can be seen as a (...) decontextualizing tendency of thought that plays an important role in human affairs. (shrink)

While defining martial arts is not prerequisite to philosophizing about them, such a definition is desirable, helping us resolve disputes about the status of hard cases. At one extreme, Martínková and Parry argue that martial arts are distinguished from both close combat (as unsystematic) and combat sports (as competitive), and from warrior arts (as lethal) and martial paths (as spiritual). At the other extreme, mixed martial arts pundits and Bruce Lee speak of combat sports generally as martial arts. I argue (...) that the fine-grained taxonomy proposed by Martínková and Parry can be usefully supplemented by a broader definition, specifically the following: martial arts are systematic fighting styles and practices as ways of embodying wisdom. A possible difficulty here is that such views face the charge of overemphasizing the “philosophical” aspect of martial arts. My definition can, however, avoid this apparent problem. If martial arts essentially aim to embody wisdom, this applies no less to the (strategic) practical wisdom of The Art of War than to the (ethical) practical wisdom of the Tao Te Ching. In an extended sense, then, any systematic fighting style, including combat sports, may count as a martial art insofar as it embodies wisdom by improving practical fighting skills. (shrink)

Philosophy’s essence depicted by Socrates lies in its role as pedagogy for living, yet its traditional treatment of ‘body’ as a hindrance to ‘knowledge’ in fact severs it from life, transforming it into ‘an escape from life’.The philosophy/life dichotomy is thus an inherent flaw preventing philosophy as traditionally taught and engaged in, from fulfilling its original goal. Recent rejections of the Cartesian nature of Western curriculum, such as O’Loughlin’s ‘Embodiment and Education: Exploring creatural existence’, constitute an (...) important theoretical paradigm shift, yet still fail to translate to substantial pedagogies which explore the ‘body’ and its relation to ‘mind’ directly. This article suggests a reorientation of philosophy teaching from its present disembodied pedagogy, towards an embodied-lived-philosophicalpractice. By the description and exemplification of modern postural yoga I will depict the twofold role of the ‘body’ in philosophy teaching: 1) The ‘body’ as pedagogical vehicle serving the emergence of philosophical discourse, and 2) The body as yielding livingness to mean embodied-lived-philosophy as opposed to disembodied-lofty-philosophical escape from life. It will thus be suggested that yoga be incorporated as an integral part of philosophy teaching reclaiming its educational ethos. (shrink)

Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy is a comprehensive and insightful book that shows how some central tenets of Confucian philosophy are supported by contemporary research in psychology. More specifically, Bongrae Seok shows “that Confucian moral philosophy is a philosophical tradition of the embodied moral mind with the potential to develop a viable theory of embodied moral psychology”. He begins part one of his book with a chapter on “What is Embodied Cognition?” saying that it generally refers (...) to “the physical mechanism of a cognitive system, in the processes of gathering, processing, storing, and accessing information”. He.. (shrink)

In this article I focus on Jerold J. Abrams’ recently edited volume on Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics and I assume as a starting point the concept itself of soma, widely cited and examined in various contributions collected in Abrams’ book. Then, I specifically concentrate my attention on one of the essays, the one authored by Stefán Snævarr, which connects in an interesting, original and sometimes also challenging way Shusterman’s thinking to some questions that have characterized the current debates in the field (...) of the philosophy of mind. On this basis, in the final part of my short essay I try to offer some provisional remarks on the potential and mutually enriching dialogue between Shusterman’s somaesthetics and embodied, extended and enactive approaches to perception and mind, such as those, for example, of contemporary theorists like Andy Clark, Shaun Gallagher and Alva Noë. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that society, embodiment, and nature are crucial to J. G. Fichte’s practical philosophy, which implies responsibilities regarding the natural environment and its non-rational denizens. In section one, I summarize Fichte’s argument that self-consciousness presupposes social interaction between embodied rational beings within a sensible environment. In section two, I explain the relation between rational beings and human bodies. In section three, I discuss the relation between rational beings and nature. In section four, I describe (...) ethical duties toward rational beings. In conclusion, I examine ethical duties regarding non-rational beings. (shrink)

Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhood through Continental, Japanese and Feminist Philosophies explores the importance of the body to ethical selfhood. Through her comparative feminist approach to ethics, the critical comparison McCarthy offers in Ethics Embodied not only illuminates complexities in Continental, Japanese and Feminist philosophies, it provides clues about how to live the model of selfhood, ethics, and the body that emerges through the encounter.

With this article, I seek to examine Krause’s analysis of the self in Analitische Philosophie, and in particular in Vorlesungen über die Psychische Anthropologie. But I do so through the texts that the Spanish Krausists devoted either to translating or to discussing and disseminating Krause’s ideas in dialogue with the philosophies of the time. In my exposition and examination of the doctrine of the self, I focus on its embedding in a particular existence through embodiment, and argue that these (...) are aspects with which Krausism can still illuminate the debate about human subjectivity. (shrink)

Review of: Embodiment, Relation, Community: A Continental Philosophy of Communication, Garnet Butchart (2019) University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 199 pp., ISBN 978-0-27108-325-4, h/bk, $80.95.

The essence of the Architectonic Philosophy of Technique is the human self-embodiment in ontogenetic, evolutionary and permanent times (Mitterauer, 1989; 2009). These time conceptions may allow the interpretation of technical processes of self-embodiment and challenge the concept of the soul. The existence of the soul in timeless permanence is my fundamental argument that technical embodiments in robots can only be generated in ontogenetic and evolutionary time periods, but not in permanence. Admittedly, the concept of the soul does (...) not play a significant role in the creation of humanoid robots by engineers, but it is immersed in the subjective experience of each human person. I conceive the soul as an all comprising active principle which guarantees subjective existence and is felt as the destiny for a perfect everlasting life. Since the modeler of the robot is also endowed with this principle, he (she) is intending to implement his (her) reflection processes as programs into a robot brain, but it is not possible to fully implement the principle of human individuality in the sense of the soul. Otherwise, the creator of the humanoid robot would self-destruct his (her) human existence - a contradictio in se. -/- In the perspective of the present article I will discuss the following. First, my brain model is outlined focusing on subjectivity and qualitative mechanisms of brain function. Then, the elementary brain operations in ontogenetic and evolutionary time scales are discussed. Furthermore, the theory of Transphysics of self-embodiment of human subjectivity in human robots is proposed. This process generates a Third Nature of robot societies. In the final section “The soul in self-embodiment” I argue that humanoid robots existentially differ from their human creators, since robots can never be endowed with a soul in its metaphysical characteristics. (shrink)

Propositionalism in the philosophy of action is the popular view that intentional actions are bodily movements caused and rationalized by certain ‘internal’ propositional attitude states that constitute the agent's perspective. I attack propositionalism's background claim that the genuinely mental/cognitive dimension of human action resides solely in some range of ‘internal’ agency-conferring representational states that causally trigger, and thus are always conceptually disentangle-able from, bodily activity itself. My opposing claim, following Ryle, Wittgenstein, and others, is that mentality and intentionality can (...) be constitutively implicated in bodily actions themselves, as exercises of a distinctive form of embodied practical understanding. I attempt to show this by attending to the fine-grained contours of various skillful actions. (shrink)

This book deepens and extends the dialogue between Buddhist philosophy and 4E philosophy of mind and phenomenology. It engages with core issues in the philosophy of mind, broadly construed in and through the dialogue between Buddhism and enactivism.

This article is an introduction to an ancient Egyptian text called The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant and an argument that it ought to be seen as a classic of political philosophy. After contextualizing the tale as part of a tradition of moral and political philosophy in ancient Egypt, I explore the methods by which the text defines the proper roles of political authority and contrast its approach to justifying political authority with the argument from the state of (...) nature so common in modern Western political philosophy. I claim that the tale's argument from dysfunction anticipates the move in contemporary Western political philosophy towards privileging non-ideal over ideal theory. I discuss challenges in translating the key term in the tale – ma'at – in light of the fact that it can be taken to mean ‘justice’ and/or ‘truth’. Finally, I discuss how the irony at the heart of its narrative can lead us to interpret the tale as having either conservative or revolutionary implications for the political system it depicts. (shrink)

Embodied Idealism argues that Maurice Merleau-Ponty's early thought - primarily as found in The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception - stands as a form of transcendental idealism. This interpretation runs against the grain of much of the Merleau-Ponty scholarship, and opposing interpretations are not without support. Merleau-Ponty is at points highly critical of idealism in his early works. Also, his emphasis on embodiment would seem to run counter to the idealist view that the mental is central to (...) reality. Joseph Berendzen shows that these points can be accommodated within a transcendental idealist interpretation. Merleau-Ponty's overt criticisms of idealism are aimed at specific aspects of idealist theories that are not obligatory aspects of idealism in general. Rather, his critique is typically aimed at a specific version of intellectualist idealism associated with his teacher Léon Brunschvicg. In spite of his overt criticisms of idealism, Merleau-Ponty's early philosophy holds that our experience is inextricably structured by our minds. Furthermore, he holds that reality is ontologically dependent on the mind, yet in a manner that also allows for a sense in which reality is mind-independent. It is crucial to this interpretation that Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on embodiment leads to a unique view of embodied consciousness and subjectivity that supports a novel form of idealism, rather than motivating an anti-idealist position. Thus, his transcendental idealism is genuinely an embodied idealism. (shrink)

The principle unifying this valuable collection of essays, all previously published, is that properly to understand Descartes’s philosophical project we must place his work in its historical context. The collection opens, accordingly, with the essay, “Does History Have a Future?”, in which Garber contrasts his context-sensitive approach to the history of philosophy with another that looks to history as a storehouse of possible truth. Though he does not deny the interest of this latter, comparatively ahistorical approach, he argues that (...) a precipitate focus on truth tends not only to distort understanding, but to deprive us of what is perhaps more useful and important, namely, new questions. For, Garber reminds us, it is not so much the truth of a past philosopher’s views, much less their falsity that causes us to reflect on our own beliefs, it is the fact that smart people took seriously views often very different from ours. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo analiza la interacción de la filosofía china de vida en la educación musical tradicional china y destaca su importante conocimiento para la educación musical tradicional. El punto de innovación radica en el estudio en profundidad de la falta de reflexión sobre la filosofía china de vida en la educación musical tradicional. Plantea cómo integrar los principios de la filosofía de la vida como “armonía, Qi e imaginería” en el proceso específico de la educación musical. El proceso específico (...) incluye la discusión de los conceptos básicos de la educación musical en la antigua China y la exploración de la aplicación de la filosofía de la vida a la estética musical. Mediante la interacción filosófica de la filosofía china de vida, como la “armonía entre el cielo y el hombre” y el trauma interactivo, este artículo enfatiza los aspectos filosóficos de la educación musical tradicional, así como la “armonía” y la “imaginería” en la estética musical. Por último, se resume la importancia de la filosofía de la vida en la educación musical tradicional china y se analiza su valor potencial para la educación musical tradicional. (shrink)

Cognitive science is in some sense the science of the mind. But an increasingly influential theme, in recent years, has been the role of the physical body, and of the local environment, in promoting adaptive success. No right-minded cognitive scientist, to be sure, ever claimed that body and world were completely irrelevant to the understanding of mind. But there was, nonetheless, an unmistakeable tendency to marginalize such factors: to dwell on inner complexity whilst simplifying or ignoring the complex inner-outer interplays (...) that characterize the bulk of basic biological problem-solving. This tendency was expressed in, for example, the development of planning algorithms that treated real-world action as merely a way of implementing solutions arrived at by pure cognition. It also surfaced in David Marr's depiction of the task of vision as the construction of a detailed threedimensional image of the visual scene. For possession of such a rich inner model effectively allows the system to ‘throw away’ the world and to focus subsequent computational activity on the inner model alone. (shrink)

In Sartrean philosophy, the body is a central element in explaining the nature of intentionality, that is, the nature of how our consciousness apprehends reality. His corporeal phenomenology aims to refute the followers of the Cartesian tradition of the mind. At the same time, in the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognition, supporters of the enactivist tradition seek to elucidate the body's central role in the constitution of cognition. Likewise, their opponents are the adherents of cognitivism, who see (...) the locus of cognition in the brain as an informational processing device for symbolic (representational) content. In this article, we intend to develop a close relationship between the Sartrean conception of intentionality and that offered by sensorimotor enactivism. Both defend the centrality of the body in so-called "cognitive" or "mental" processes; both defend a kind of externalism about mental content; and both criticize the internalist and representationalist paradigm focused on internal processes only located in the brain. These similarities allow us to trace a relationship of continuity between Sartrean phenomenology and the embodied traditions of the mind. (shrink)

Following the philosophy of embodiment of Merleau-Ponty, Jonas and others, enactivism is a pivot point from which various areas of science can be brought into a fruitful dialogue about the nature of subjectivity. In this chapter we present the enactive conception of agency, which, in contrast to current mainstream theories of agency, is deeply and strongly embodied. In line with this thinking we argue that anything that ought to be considered a genuine agent is a biologically embodied (even (...) if distributed) agent, and that this embodiment must be affectively lived. However, we also consider that such an affective agent is not necessarily also an agent imbued with an explicit sense of subjectivity. To support this contention we outline the interoceptive foundation of basic agency and argue that there is a qualitative difference in the phenomenology of agency when it is instantiated in organisms which, due to their complexity and size, require a nervous system to underpin their physiological and sensorimotor processes. We argue that this interoceptively grounded agency not only entails affectivity but also forms the necessary basis for subjectivity. (shrink)

Following WWII the French state deployed television as an instrument of nation-building. The televising of philosophy, visible in 3500 programs aired between 1951 and 1999, contributed to this project. This article examines forty philosophy shows produced for national broadcast in France during the 1960s. It argues that philosophy's dialogic structure rendered it suited to capitalize on television technology. These shows (featuring Hyppolite, Canguilhem, Ricoeur, Foucault and Badiou) also demonstrate how the state used philosophy to reify an (...) image of national superiority at a time when, under the impress of decolonization and modernization, France's role in the global arena was in question. (shrink)

Embodied knowledge in chronic illness and injury When people experience chronic illness or serious injury, changes occur not just within their physical bodies but also in their embodiments, that is, how they view the world through their bodies. For such patients, dualistic (mind–body) notions of the body as object and the mind as subject can devalue experiences that are necessary for healing and for managing everyday problems related to their illness or injury. Nurses need to be able to guide people (...) with illness or injury to new levels of wellness, but may lack appropriate theoretical conceptualizations. Philosophies that underlie embodied knowledge — in particular, philosophies of Merleau‐Ponty and Polanyi — were explored yielding two new ways to understand the body. The body as ‘silent partner’ fosters an appreciation of the body's own subjectivity that can be enhanced in nursing care through sensitivity, listening, and creative coaching. Nurses can assist their patients to identify new and positive understandings of what their bodies mean to them after bodily changes. The body as ‘informant’ holds much promise for solving some of the everyday problems that people with chronic illness or injury experience. By using phenomenological and other naturalistic methods, researchers and patients can find clues to solving such problems, clues that are known through daily living but hidden beneath conscious awareness. As a result, some of the practical know‐how of the body as ‘informant’ can be transformed into testable nursing interventions. (shrink)

One of the main topics in philosophical work dealing with physical education is if and how the subject can justify its educational value. Acquisition of practical knowledge in the form of skills and the provision of positive and meaningful embodied experiences are central to the justification of physical education. The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between skill and embodied experience in physical education through the notion and concept of habit. The literature on phenomenology of skill acquisition (...) is first considered. In particular, we draw on Merleau-Ponty’s notion of habit. Further, we introduce pragmatist philosophy and in particular the work of John Dewey as a useful complement to the phenomenological perspective. It is in particular Dewey’s emphasis on habits, experience and education that are found to be useful in our exploration of the relationship between the two justifications under consideration, because it allows us to point out the importance of habits of att... (shrink)

Luce Irigaray’s writings on Nietzsche’s philosophy belong to the groundbreaking interpretations of his work and they also confirm the continued relevance of his philosophy. Unlike most male-centric philosophers, Nietzsche not only saw that sexual difference was becoming one of the major philosophical issues of our age. He was also keenly aware of how it permeated our philosophical tradition with its dualistic models, which is one reason for Irigaray’s interest in it, as has been widely discussed in feminist/queer philosophical (...) research into her Nietzsche interpretation. Another common denominator of Nietzsche and Irigaray are their philosophies of the body. Interpreters of Irigaray have pointed out how her conception of embodied, sexuate being calls for a new way of philosophical thinking, and Stegmaier interprets the liberation from prejudices we encounter in Nietzsche’s works as a “liberation of philosophy.” How can the liberation of philosophy be understood in the way we practice philosophical thinking? In the following interpretation of Irigaray’s book The Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, I show how it offers a theory and a practice of embodied philosophical thinking, which I will discuss in light of new phenomenological methodologies of embodied thinking. Irigaray’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy in Marine Lover is both critical and constructive as apparent in her interpretation of Dionysus and Ariadne. On the one hand, this couple represents for her the patriarchal tradition of philosophy that she claims Nietzsche is still stuck in, and on the other hand, it also represents a liberation from resentment and misogyny in relations of the sexes. The notions of listening to oneself and to the other, being touched and tearing, enable such a liberation, both on the level of relations of the sexes and on the level of philosophical dialogues and thinking that Dionysus and Ariadne also represent. The water/ocean in the title of Marine Lover indicates how this is a philosophical text that displays an explicit processing and articulation of feelings, emotions, and affects in philosophical thinking. (shrink)

_Contributions to Law, Philosophy and Ecology: Exploring Re-Embodiments_ is a preliminary contribution to the establishment of re-embodiments as a theoretical strand within legal and ecological theory and philosophy. Re-embodiments are all those contemporary practices and processes that exceed the epistemic horizon of modernity. As such, they offer a plurality of alternative modes of theory and practice that seek to counteract the ecocidal tendencies of the Anthropocene. The collection is comprised of eleven contributions approaching re-embodiments from a multiplicity of (...) fields, including legal theory, eco-philosophy, eco-feminism and anthropology. The contributions are organized in three parts, ‘Beyond Modernity, ‘The Sacred Dimension’ and ‘The Legal Dimension’. The collection is opened by a comprehensive introduction that situates re-embodiments in theoretical context. Whilst closely bound with embodiment and new materialist theory, this book_ _contributes a unique voice that echoes diverse political processes contemporaneous to our times. Written in an elegant and accessible language, the book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates and established scholars alike seeking to understand and take re-embodiments further, both politically and theoretically. (shrink)

While many scholars join in the call for an experiential shift in thinking and living, it is not always clear how it could be done. Recent environmental philosophy has illuminated the significance of re-animating human–environment relations on an experiential level for endeavouring a new (or renewed) ethical, experiential, and, indeed, existential stance of the human as part of the environed embodiment. In relation to this call, I explore embodied critical thinking (ECT) as a tool for recognising, revitalising, and (...) reflecting embodied, enactive, and embedded thinking that comes from a felt sense. Thus, this chapter employs some of the TAE (Thinking at the Edge) steps for ECT research as a practical approach to facilitating and embracing a new way of thinking that is crucial for reconnecting humans with their lived environments, but also for emancipating research practices to enable research that goes out from such a renewed connectivity. In particular, the chapter traces the application of Eugene Gendlin’s move of instancing to showcase the use of embodied knowing and felt sense in environmental contexts. Thus, it showcases how, in fundamental ways that speak directly to and from our embodied embeddedness, ECT has an emancipatory impact in ways that resonate with lived experiences. (shrink)

Issues surrounding birth and death have been fundamental for Western philosophy as well as for individual existence. The contributors to this volume unravel the gendered aspects of the classical philosophical discourses on death, bringing in discussions about birth, creativity, and the entire chain of human activity. By linking their work to major thinkers such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, Beauvoir, and Arendt, and to major philosophical currents such as ancient philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, and social and political philosophy, they challenge (...) prevailing feminist articulations of birth and death. These philosophical reflections add an important sexual dimension to current thinking on identity, temporality, and community. (shrink)

Groups are ubiquitous in our lives. But while some of them are highly structured and appear to support a shared intentionality and even a shared agency, others are much less cohesive and do not seem to demand much of their individual members. Queues, for example, seem to be, at a given time, nothing over and above some individuals as they exemplify a certain spatial arrangement. Indeed, the main aim of this paper is to develop the more general thought that at (...) a given time, a group is nothing over and above some individual members as they exemplify a certain complex condition. The general conception of groups that emerges is able to accommodate a variety of constraints on a reasonable answer to the question of what are groups. (shrink)

This volume collects some of the seminal essays on Descartes by Daniel Garber, one of the pre-eminent scholars of early-modern philosophy. A central theme unifying the volume is the interconnection between Descartes' philosophical and scientific interests, and the extent to which these two sides of the Cartesian program illuminate each other, a question rarely treated in the existing literature. Amongst the specific topics discussed in the essays are Descartes' celebrated method, his demand for certainty in the sciences, his account (...) of the relation of mind and body, and his conception of God's activity on the physical world. This collection will be a mandatory purchase for any serious student of or professional working in seventeenth-century philosophy, history of science, or history of ideas. (shrink)

Embodied Selves and Divided Minds examines how research in embodied cognition and enactivism can contribute to our understanding of the nature of self-consciousness, the metaphysics of personal identity, and the disruptions to self-awareness that occur in case of psychopathology. The book reveals how a critical dialogue between Philosophy and Psychiatry can lead to a better understanding of important issues surrounding self-consciousness, personal identity, and psychopathology.

One version of the problem of evil concludes that personalistic forms of theism should be rejected since the acts that one would expect a God with person-like qualities to perform, notably acts that would prevent egregious evils, do not occur. Given the evils that exist in the world, it is argued, if God exists as a person or like a person, God’s record of action is akin to that of a negligent parent. One way of responding to this “argument from (...) neglect” is to maintain that there is a good reason for the apparent neglect—namely, that God could not intervene even once with respect to suffering without thereby incurring the responsibility of doing so on every occasion, which would be deleterious. So God never responds to evil. It is argued in this paper that a profoundly integrated, personalistic model of God and the God-world relation—one that is reflected in a soul-body analogy—provides a way of addressing the argument from neglect without affirming the not-even-once principle. (shrink)

The central doctrine of traditional Christianity, the doctrine of the Incarnation, is that the Second Person of the Trinity lived a human existence on Earth as Jesus Christ for a finite period. In the words of the Nicene Creed, the Son is himwho for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.