The position of individuals' bodies (e.g., holding a pencil in the mouth in a way that either facilitates or inhibits smiling musculature) can influence their emotional reactions to the stimuli they encounter, and can even impact their explicit preferences for one item over another. In this article we begin by reviewing the literature demonstrating these effects, explore mechanisms to explain this body-preference link, and introduce new work from our lab that asks whether one's bodily or motor experiences might also (...) shape preferences in situations where the body is not contorted in a particular position, or when there is no intention to act. Such work suggests that one consequence of perceiving an object is the automatic and covert motor simulation of acting on this object. This, in turn, provides individuals with information about how easy or hard this action would be. It transpires that we like to do what is easy, and we also prefer objects that are easier to act on. The notion that judgments of object likeability are driven by motoric information furthers embodied cognition theories by demonstrating that even our preferences are grounded in action. (shrink)

One of Descartes’ greatest contributions to modern thought lies in his dualistic conception of mind and body. While the physical body in Descartes assumes a passive role in the ontological structure of reality, subject to mechanistic laws, the mind in Descartes, on the other hand, assumes an active role, as an organizing axis and producer of values and ideas, exercising a rational dominion over reality. physical reality. This dualistic Cartesian conception would generate important effects on the problem of (...) mind-body interaction, becoming the central theme debated by contemporary philosophy of mind. Contemporary theories of philosophy of mind seek to overcome this dualism, through neuroscience and cognitive psychology. These theories attempt to apply the reductionist scientific model to human mental phenomena and processes, describing them in non-mental, physical, and empirical terms. However, the reductionist project of these contemporary theories has not yet proved successful in explaining unobservable phenomena of the mind, such as consciousness, will and human subjectivity. (shrink)

Resumo: O setor de vestuário trouxe novas chances de desenvolvimento ao mercado, como resultado do avanço da sociedade e da expansão da cultura e da arte. Além de ter alto valor decorativo, como sua extensão e ampliação, o desempenho do vestuário também pode existir, independentemente, como uma arte. No entanto, ao moldar a imagem artística do desempenho do vestuário, o foco principal concentra-se na apresentação de imagens externas, sem a expressão das características rítmicas e conotativas dos movimentos corporais, o que (...) não apenas enfraquece o efeito visual do desempenho, mas também afeta sua integridade e continuidade. Portanto, compreender a relação entre o desempenho do vestuário e o corpo e promover sua integração e penetração mútuas são de grande valor e importância, para o desenvolvimento atual da arte visual. A filosofia do corpo é uma disciplina filosófica que explora o corpo e as experiências corporais. Ela preocupa-se com a maneira como o corpo percebe e existe. Isso pode encorajar atores e figurinistas a considerarem como as roupas moldam e comunicam a identidade social e pessoal, além de observarem como a performance do figurino pode explorar a diversidade e a mudança de identidade. O presente artigo explica a relação entre o corpo e a estética, com base na história do desenvolvimento, na função e no valor do desempenho das roupas, combinados com a teoria da filosofia do corpo, a fim de estudar mais profundamente a relação entre o desempenho do vestuário e o corpo, de sorte a aumentar a eficácia do desempenho do vestuário. Do ponto de vista da filosofia do corpo, trata-se de um fator indispensável no desempenho do figurino. Este, por sua vez, pode alcançar a expressão artística do corpo, sendo que ambos interagem e se promovem. A íntima relação entre os dois tem importância significativa para o alcance de níveis mais elevados de representação visual, no desenvolvimento das atividades estéticas. (shrink)

Living corporeity is the intermediate element between nature and culture, which must be thought of as a reciprocal interconnection, since as corporeal beings we always move on a threshold. In the reflection of the bodily self, a doubling between the living body as a functioning subject and as a material object is revealed; after all, even one's own body sometimes takes on the features of a foreign body, as is the case in the experience of illness. In (...) the technical instrument, the body is prolonged and this highlights the connection between the technique of the thing and the technique of the self; however, despite the gradual autonomisation of the technical element from the living corporeity, there remains what escapes calculation and looms large in the subtraction of the alien. (shrink)

Fanon's conception of the body schema plays a central role in his philosophy. The body schema is the body's “grasp” or “sense” of itself. Fanon argues that in the encounter between the Black and white person the body schema “crumbles,” so that the Black person experiences herself as object‐like in various ways. Fanon's focus is the Black person's experience because his aim is to provide the Black person with tools for emancipation. Nevertheless, his account raises the (...) question: What happens to white self‐awareness within the colonial system? I argue that a proper understanding of Fanon's notion of the body schema provides an answer. The body schema underpins awareness of other people, not just one's bodily self. It is the self‐other experiential system that crumbles in the colonial system. Thus, we can supplement Fanon's account of Black self‐experience as object‐like with a description of white experience as tending toward solipsism, where this is the other side of the Black self‐awareness that Fanon describes. Both forms of awareness result from degraded reciprocity. Whilst they are not the same, they are nevertheless complementary parts of a defective relation between people. (shrink)

This article situates the (human) body as a signifier for society at large, arguing that developments in many societies of structural and systematic violence that targets minorities such as refugees and first nation peoples, points to a failure of democratic values. Using two examples, we elaborate technology and digital devices as prosthesis of the body, that are also acting as proxy for state violence. The first example is from the carceral archipelago of Manus Island as a site of (...) remote detention of refugees carried out by the Australian government. Refugees held on Manus Island describe the treatment they experience as torture. The second example is drawn from the Australian mainland, telling the stories of First Nations children subjected to abuse and violence in juvenile detention centers. A judicial inquiry (Royal Commission) found that a systematic approach aimed at punishing children constituted torture. The concepts developed in this article are those of bordering and racialization, while the intertwining of human and “more than human life” helps to understand and challenge the necropolitical power evident in (liberal) capitalism. (shrink)

Yoga has come to be an icon of Indian culture and civilization, and it is widely regarded as being timeless and unchanging. Based on extensive ethnographic research and an analysis of both ancient and modern texts, Yoga in Modern India challenges this popular view by examining the history of yoga, focusing on its emergence in modern India and its dramatically changing form and significance in the twentieth century. Joseph Alter argues that yoga's transformation into a popular activity idolized for its (...) health value is based on modern ideas about science and medicine. Alter centers his analysis on an interpretation of the seminal work of Swami Kuvalayananda, one of the chief architects of the Yoga Renaissance in the early twentieth century. From this point of orientation he explores current interpretations of yoga and considers how practitioners of yogic medicine and fitness combine the ideas of biology, physiology, and anatomy with those of metaphysics, transcendence, and magical power. The first serious ethnographic history of modern yoga in India, this fluently written book is must reading not only for students and scholars but also practitioners who seek a deeper understanding of how yoga developed over time into the exceedingly popular phenomenon it is today. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre and Jan Patočka claim to go beneath the phenomenal correlation between the subject and the world discovered by Husserl in order to account for it from a more fundamental plane. Their going below the “universal a priori of correlation” allows them to describe it more thoroughly. But we wish to show that Sartre’s description remains dependent on a philosophical realism which prevents him from accounting for the genesis of the correlation. Patočka, however, achieves just this thanks to his (...) conception of an originary appearing. To verify this thesis, we will investigate the status of the body in both authors, so far as a successful account of the body should ensure the connection between the original plane and the openness to the world characteristic of the subject. Recognizing this function in the body, we ask if either Sartre’s or Patočka’s philosophy grants to the body the place it deserves and suggest that only Patočka achieves this, while Sartre is prevented from doing so by his realism. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the functioning of the connection between the brain and the body, the analysis of possible disturbances in the transmission of information impulses from the brain to the body and consideration of the causes of distortion and defects in the implementation of this connection. The specifics of the connection between the brain and the body are considered from the point of view of various areas: neurophysiological, anatomical, psychological. (...) Examples of communication distortion and reasons for incorrect transmission of the reaction are given. An analysis of all possible factors influencing the implementation of the connection under consideration is carried out, various types of violations are listed, and methods for correcting these violations are also presented. The result of this study is the structuring of information about the functioning of the connection between the brain and the body, consideration of all special cases of defectiveness of this connection and an explanation of the reasons for their occurrence. The article will be of practical benefit to specialists in the field of neurobiology. (shrink)

Descartes was disappointed with most of the Objections collected to accompany the Meditations in 1641, but he took a particularly dim view of the Third Set. ‘I am surprised that I have found not one valid argument in these objections,’ he wrote, close to the end of a series of curt and dismissive replies. The author of the objections was Thomas Hobbes. There was one other unfriendly exchange between Descartes and Hobbes in 1641. Descartes received through Mersenne some letters criticizing (...) theses in the Dioptrics, one of the Essays published with the Discourse on Method in 1637. Mersenne did not name Hobbes as the writer of the letters, attributing them to an unspecified Englishman, and it seems that Descartes never connected the critic of his optics with the author of the objections to his metaphysics. Nevertheless, Descartes responded with some hostility to the letters, angrily rebutting some points about refraction and charging that others had been appropriated from his own writings. Insinuating that the English correspondent was dishonest, Descartes decided to have no more to do with him. A meeting between the two men did take place in 1648 at a dinner given by the Marquis of Newcastle, but even on this occasion they did not see eye to eye, getting into an argument about the nature of hardness. (shrink)

In this interview with curator Cécile Bourne Farrell, artist Jananne Al-Ani discusses her aerial films Shadow Sites I (2010) and Shadow Sites II (2011) and the representation of landscape, from the Middle East to the American south-west, in relation to Kitty Hauser’s book Shadow Sites: Photography, Archaeology, & the British Landscape 1927–1955 (2007) a study on the emergence of aerial archaeology and the role of the sun’s movement in materializing latent histories embedded in the landscape. A French translation of the (...) interview first appeared in issue 59 of the journal Multitudes. (shrink)

Abstract:Retro-writing has ethical implications. How a speaking subject applies a retro-perspective frames a piece of writing within certain cultural discourses. In contemporary Chinese poetry, cultural nostalgia and the attempted revival of ancient aesthetics is a complex issue, one that is largely the result of a general interest in cultural archeology, writers’ anxiety of influence, the desire to escape from various political pressures, and the claim of a need for a distinctive Chinese cultural identity. The subject in many contemporary Chinese poems, (...) in many cases, is a male subject striving to retrieve the premodern holistic state of being, which is illusory. Han Bo’s two poems “Modern Sex Machine” and “Mass(ive) Killing Machine” are unique in that they examine the bludgeoning of modernity within postmodern parameters and attempt to map the dynamics of modern and contemporary subjecthood, which is in fact a transcorporeal experience of the subject as that which is, ultimately, subjectless. Such work, in creating a cross-corporeal subjectless subject, embraces alterity and renders possibilities for the reader to reject a prior unitary transcendental subject that is illusory, and thereby to discover the beings of themselves and their roles in the world—and to extend this work of reconfiguring subjecthood from literature into other aspects of social life. (shrink)

Retro-writing has ethical implications. How a speaking subject applies a retro-perspective frames a piece of writing within certain cultural discourses. In contemporary Chinese poetry, cultural nostalgia and the attempted revival of ancient aesthetics is a complex issue, one that is largely the result of a general interest in cultural archeology, writers’ anxiety of influence, the desire to escape from various political pressures, and the claim of a need for a distinc­tive Chinese cultural identity. The subject in many contemporary Chinese poems, (...) in many cases, is a male subject striving to retrieve the premodern holistic state of being, which is illusory. Han Bo’s two poems “Modern Sex Machine” and “Mass Killing Machine” are unique in that they examine the bludgeoning of modernity within postmodern parameters and attempt to map the dynamics of modern and contemporary subjecthood, which is in fact a transcorporeal experience of the subject as that which is, ultimately, subjectless. Such work, in creating a cross-corporeal subjectless subject, embraces alterity and renders possibilities for the reader to reject a prior unitary transcendental subject that is illusory, and thereby to discover the beings of themselves and their roles in the world—and to extend this work of reconfiguring subjecthood from literature into other aspects of social life. (shrink)

The body in-pain has regularly been relegated to "the dark side"of Western biomedicine, academic research, and even everyday life. Following Starhawk's aptly titled resuscitation of "the dark"as a fertile source of spiritual transformation (Dreaming the Dark, 1982), this essay examines the ways in which intractable pain can open up the body to "a new body in the making" —one that engages with pain kinesthetically as well as discursively. This essay explores three ethnographic cases emerging from three different (...) American fieldvvork sites. An Internet mailing list called WITSENDO constitutes the first case; through often daily participation in this electronic mailing list, women suffering from endometriosis co-create a virtual community that strikingly mitigates their experiences of chronicand intense pain. The shift in how long-term clients of acupuncture care regard needling is the locus of the second case. Acupuncture treatments in American clinical settings often negotiate an American cultural assumption that needles are painful; this second case documents what happens to patients' "fear" of needles and experiences of pain after regular acupuncture treatments. The third case focuses on adepth interview with an American doula who provides labor support for women primarily in hospital settings, this interview explores the conditions under which American women in labor experience pain and how alternative birth professionals define and conceive of pain during childbirth.These three ethnographic cases highlight the cultural construction of pain by delving into the ways that pain sufferers and health care practitioners engage with the body-in-pain. Such engagements occur in the realm of language - both discursive and kinesthetic language. (shrink)

How the Body Shapes the Mind is an interdisciplinary work that addresses philosophical questions by appealing to evidence found in experimental psychology, neuroscience, studies of pathologies, and developmental psychology. There is a growing consensus across these disciplines that the contribution of embodiment to cognition is inescapable. Because this insight has been developed across a variety of disciplines, however, there is still a need to develop a common vocabulary that is capable of integrating discussions of brain mechanisms in neuroscience, behavioural (...) expressions in psychology, design concerns in artificial intelligence and robotics, and debates about embodied experience in the phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Shaun Gallagher's book aims to contribute to the formulation of that common vocabulary and to develop a conceptual framework that will avoid both the overly reductionistic approaches that explain everything in terms of bottom-up neuronal mechanisms, and inflationistic approaches that explain everything in terms of Cartesian, top-down cognitive states. Gallagher pursues two basic sets of questions. The first set consists of questions about the phenomenal aspects of the structure of experience, and specifically the relatively regular and constant features that we find in the content of our experience. If throughout conscious experience there is a constant reference to one's own body, even if this is a recessive or marginal awareness, then that reference constitutes a structural feature of the phenomenal field of consciousness, part of a framework that is likely to determine or influence all other aspects of experience. The second set of questions concerns aspects of the structure of experience that are more hidden, those that may be more difficult to get at because they happen before we know it. They do not normally enter into the content of experience in an explicit way, and are often inaccessible to reflective consciousness. To what extent, and in what ways, are consciousness and cognitive processes, which include experiences related to perception, memory, imagination, belief, judgement, and so forth, shaped or structured by the fact that they are embodied in this way? (shrink)

The differences between the image of top athletes in history and those today could meet at the intersection between cyborg theory and sport studies. The reconceptualisation of athletes could at first be viewed as a shift from the “natural” to the “artificial”. Throughout history top athletes have always been considered to be somehow unnatural, and have always been celebrated as heroes who have overcome the boundaries of their natural bodies. Today’s sports events have been attracting more viewers than ever before, (...) and tough competition has been raising the very standards of competition. High attendance sports are already freak shows; whether from the comfort of their homes or from the grandstands, it is difficult for sport supporters to imagine themselves sculpting such a super-muscular body with super-fast reflexes. Old-fashioned blood, sweat and tears are still present somewhere, although they are incorporated into the advanced achievements of the modern techno-culture. A number of the issues raised from this perspective have found room for discussion in the relatively new pluri-perspectival approach to the challenges of the biotechnological era – in bioethics. Bioethics offers a platform for a dialogue on the key questions of today’s world, a dialogue that surpasses disciplinary, expert, historical and cultural positions. However, any such discourse is facing a pluralism of approaches and methodological barriers, and presupposes the existence of adequate theoretical grounds. This paper highlights only some of the problem points that plastically outline the insufficiencies of the existing mono-perspectively guided conceptions in the field of sport. Accordingly, the authoress emphasises only some of the symptoms that point to the disorientedness of everyday life, which is portrayed in sport in a rather peculiar way: the fragility of the ethical positions contained in the concepts of the “spirit of sport” and fair play in facing the developments of science and technology, the objectification of the body, and an increase in the people’s interest in high-risk activities. The authoress views these traits as signs of the need to transcend the until recently prevalent reductionistic and mono-perspectival approaches, which the distinctive bioethical approach can indeed do. (shrink)

The differences between the image of top athletes in history and those today could meet at the intersection between cyborg theory and sport studies. The reconceptualisation of athletes could at first be viewed as a shift from the “natural” to the “artificial”. Throughout history top athletes have always been considered to be somehow unnatural, and have always been celebrated as heroes who have overcome the boundaries of their natural bodies. Today’s sports events have been attracting more viewers than ever before, (...) and tough competition has been raising the very standards of competition. High attendance sports are already freak shows; whether from the comfort of their homes or from the grandstands, it is difficult for sport supporters to imagine themselves sculpting such a super-muscular body with super-fast reflexes. Old-fashioned blood, sweat and tears are still present somewhere, although they are incorporated into the advanced achievements of the modern techno-culture. A number of the issues raised from this perspective have found room for discussion in the relatively new pluri-perspectival approach to the challenges of the biotechnological era – in bioethics. Bioethics offers a platform for a dialogue on the key questions of today’s world, a dialogue that surpasses disciplinary, expert, historical and cultural positions. However, any such discourse is facing a pluralism of approaches and methodological barriers, and presupposes the existence of adequate theoretical grounds. This paper highlights only some of the problem points that plastically outline the insufficiencies of the existing mono-perspectively guided conceptions in the field of sport. Accordingly, the authoress emphasises only some of the symptoms that point to the disorientedness of everyday life, which is portrayed in sport in a rather peculiar way: the fragility of the ethical positions contained in the concepts of the “spirit of sport” and fair play in facing the developments of science and technology, the objectification of the body, and an increase in the people’s interest in high-risk activities. The authoress views these traits as signs of the need to transcend the until recently prevalent reductionistic and mono-perspectival approaches, which the distinctive bioethical approach can indeed do. (shrink)

Explores mind-body philosophy from an Asian perspective.

In The Bodies of Women , Rosalyn Diprose argues that traditional approaches to ethics both perpetuate and remain blind to the mechanisms of the subordination of women. She shows that injustice against women begins in the ways that social discourses and practices place women's embodied existence as improper and secondary to men. She intervenes into debates about sexual difference, ethics, philosophies of the body and theories of self in order to develop a new ethics which places sexual difference at (...) the very center of meaning. Diprose analyzes attempts in both feminist and non-feminist ethics to recognize the role of sexual difference. She critiques biomedical discourses whose descriptions mask a constitution and regulation of "the body." Drawing on insights from continental philosophy and feminist theory, The Bodies of Women includes critical readings of Hegel, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Foucault as well as productive engagementwith contemporary feminist scholars such as Irigaray, Cornell and Young. What emerges is a unique approach to the ethics of sexual difference which both locates and subverts mechanisms of sexual discrimination. (shrink)

Notions of human nature and what is natural are vague and contradictory within the field of bioethics, especially evident through individuals critical of bodily diversity through nanobiology and biotechnology in general. This paper discusses the paradoxical aspects of these notions of human nature, while showing that they rely on a notion of a standard body that all humans allegedly share. I examine several writings on biotechnology by bioethicists, specifically by people working in policy—it is here that the normativity of (...) human nature becomes a pressing concern. Once it has been shown that there is no standard body, and indeed typical bioethical notions of human nature are internally contradictory, a more productive conversation can be engaged in that allows for morphological diversity, be it through biotechnological change or via nature itself. (shrink)

In What the Body Commands, Colin Klein proposes and defends a novel theory of pain. Klein argues that pains are imperative; they are sensations with a content, and that content is a command to protect the injured part of the body. He terms this view "imperativism about pain," and argues that imperativism can account for two puzzling features of pain: its strong motivating power and its uninformative nature. Klein argues that the biological purpose of pain is homeostatic; like (...) hunger and thirst, pain helps solve a challenge to bodily integrity. It does so by motivating you to act in ways that help the body recover. If you obey pain's command, you get better. He develops his account to handle a variety of pain phenomena and applies it to solve a number of historically puzzling cases. Klein's intent is to defend the imperativist view in a pure form -- without requiring pain to represent facts about the world.Klein presents a model of imperative content showing that intrinsically motivating sensations are best understood as imperatives, and argues that pain belongs to this class. He considers the distinction between pain and suffering; explains how pain motivates; addresses variations among pains; and offers an imperativist account of maladaptive pains, pains that don't appear to hurt, masochism, and why pain feels bad. (shrink)

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vacabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury (...) trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inatriculate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate. About the Author: Elaine Scarry is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

In The Body of Compassion, Joel Shuman presents an important, new theological treatment of contemporary bioethics, weaving together personal experience, a critical treatise on contemporary bioethics, and an exploration of a Christian theological alternative.The author first draws the reader into a consideration of the current state of bioethics by relating the story of his grandfather, a hard-working family man who died a solitary death, unaccompanied by loved ones, in the unfamiliar and sterile world of a hospital. Troubled by the (...) way his grandfather died, Shuman takes the reader along as he explores how modern medicine has distanced itself from dealing with people as living beings beyond their immediate physicality. He examines how various approaches to bioethics over the past twenty years have tried to remedy this problem by prescribing certain standards for treatment and how each of these ultimately has fallen short due to the lack of “a teleological concern for the body”—i.e., to trying to understand what the body is actually for in a larger context. From this point, Shuman deftly moves to a discussion of the centrality of the body to Christianity, focusing on how baptism, participation in the liturgy, and the partaking of the Eucharist all serve to unite Christians as one in the body of Christ. For Christians, the author argues, the body does not just belong to the individual but rather is one with the community of the Church. With this in mind, Shuman proposes a new kind of bioethics for Christians, where care for the body of Christ becomes the model of how we should care for and receive care from each other.This fresh and thought-provoking book is sure to be of interest to ethicists, medical professionals, and everyone who is troubled by places where science and religion intersect and seem to conflict. (shrink)

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it.Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, (...) and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate. (shrink)

The paper explores the role of body in Epictetus’s Discourse and Buddhist Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and underscores the importance of embodied practice in Epictetan askēsis (‘training or exercise’). It argues that the important but unrecognized role of the body in Epictetan askēsis can be better understood if we introduce in some perspectives of early Buddhism. From the angle of spiritual exercise, early Buddhism maintains that the meditator ought to experience the body directly and contemplate the body as (...) an impermanent physical object, and not identify oneself with it. And based on the insight into the reality of the body and the cultivation of bodily awareness, the meditator can detach himself from the transient phenomenon and remove the unwholesome states of mind. Similarly, for Epictetus, by training our impression on the body and regarding the body as an indifferent thing but not the true self, one may successfully attain the truth of the body conditioned in various social contexts and then realize detachment and freedom. Therefore, in both early Buddhist meditation and Epictetan askēsis, the embodied practice of contemplating the body as it actually is, is also a spiritual exercise to understand the phenomenal world and detach from external things and to examine and tranquilize the internal world. (shrink)

It would seem that there has been a growing concern about the body during the composition of the Hebrew Bible, just as the body has awakened in the mind of the humanities during the last three to four decades in Western culture. Parallel to that has been a growing interest in psychological understanding often linked to the wisdom writings, and now again when the historical–critical approach has shown its limitations. The aim of psychoanalysing the body image of (...) Job has several advantages: it allows the recipient to sense the body of the protagonist and so penetrate into the core of the narrative. Moreover, psychological sense can be made of the deeper meanings underlying certain body parts, which play a particularly important role for Job. In such a way, a network of subtexts can be accessed. This study will trace the image of Job’s body in the mind of the external world around him but more so in his own internal reality as depicted by the text. This will then constitute a body image which shifts amongst the characters and as the narrative develops. The clusters of attention imply the relations between the body parts in Job’s mind and suggest the tensions of his still unintegrated body image. (shrink)

Table of Contents Acknowledgments 1 Self-Consciousness and the Body: An Interdisciplinary Introduction by Naomi Eiland, Anthony Marcel and José Luis Bermúdez 2 The Body Image and Self-Consciousness by John Campbell 3 Infants’ Understanding of People and Things: From Body Imitation to Folk Psychology by Andrew N. Meltzoff and M. Keith Moore 4 Persons, Animals, and Bodies by Paul F. Snowdon 5 An Ecological Perspective on the Origins of Self by George Butterworth 6 Objectivity, Causality, and Agency by (...) Thomas Baldwin 7 At Two with Nature: Agency and the Development of Self-World Dualism by James Russell 8 Ecological Perception and the Notion of a Nonconceptual Point of View by José Luis Bermúdez 9 Proprioception and the Body Image by Brian O’Shaughnessy 10 Awareness of One’s Own Body: An Attentional Theory of Its Nature, Development, and Brain Basis by Marcel Kinsbourne 11 Body Schema and Intentionality by Shaun Gallagher 12 Living without Touch and Peripheral Information about Body Position and Movement: Studies with Deafferented Subjects by Jonathan Cole and Jacques Paillard 13 Bodily Awareness: A Sense of Ownership by M. G. F. Martin 14 Bodily Awareness and the Self by Bill Brewer 15 Introspection and Bodily Self-Ascription by Quassim Cassam 16 Consciousness and the Self by Naomi Eilan Contributors Index. (shrink)

This book investigates the concept of body shame and explores its significance when considering philosophical accounts of embodied subjectivity, providing phenomenological reflections on how the body is shaped by social forces.