Author: George Lakoff
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780465056743
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 644
Get Book Here
Book Description
What are human beings like? How is knowledge possible? What is truth? Where do moral values come from? Questions like these have stood at the center of Western philosophy for centuries. In addressing them, philosophers have made certain fundamental assumptions-that we can know our own minds by introspection, that most of our thinking about the world is literal, and that reason is disembodied and universal-that are now called into question by well-established results of cognitive science. It has been shown empirically that:Most thought is unconscious. We have no direct conscious access to the mechanisms of thought and language. Our ideas go by too quickly and at too deep a level for us to observe them in any simple way.Abstract concepts are mostly metaphorical. Much of the subject matter of philosopy, such as the nature of time, morality, causation, the mind, and the self, relies heavily on basic metaphors derived from bodily experience. What is literal in our reasoning about such concepts is minimal and conceptually impoverished. All the richness comes from metaphor. For instance, we have two mutually incompatible metaphors for time, both of which represent it as movement through space: in one it is a flow past us and in the other a spatial dimension we move along.Mind is embodied. Thought requires a body-not in the trivial sense that you need a physical brain to think with, but in the profound sense that the very structure of our thoughts comes from the nature of the body. Nearly all of our unconscious metaphors are based on common bodily experiences.Most of the central themes of the Western philosophical tradition are called into question by these findings. The Cartesian person, with a mind wholly separate from the body, does not exist. The Kantian person, capable of moral action according to the dictates of a universal reason, does not exist. The phenomenological person, capable of knowing his or her mind entirely through introspection alone, does not exist. The utilitarian person, the Chomskian person, the poststructuralist person, the computational person, and the person defined by analytic philosopy all do not exist.Then what does?Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosopy responsible to the science of mind offers radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. After first describing the philosophical stance that must follow from taking cognitive science seriously, they re-examine the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self: then they rethink a host of philosophical traditions, from the classical Greeks through Kantian morality through modern analytic philosopy. They reveal the metaphorical structure underlying each mode of thought and show how the metaphysics of each theory flows from its metaphors. Finally, they take on two major issues of twentieth-century philosopy: how we conceive rationality, and how we conceive language.
Author: George Lakoff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 650
Get Book Here
Book Description
Reexamines the Western philosophical tradition, looking at the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self.
Author: Emmanuel Falque
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810130238
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Get Book Here
Book Description
Fons signatus: the sealed source -- Part One. God: chapter 1. Metaphysics and theology in tension (Augustine); chapter 2. God phenomenon (John Scotus Erigena); chapter 3. Reduction and conversion (Meister Eckhart) -- Part Two. The Flesh: chapter 4. The visibility of the flesh (Irenaeus); chapter 5. The solidity of the flesh (Tertullian); chapter 6.- The conversion of the flesh (Bonaventure) -- Part Three. The Other: chapter 7. Community and intersubjectivity (Origen); chapter 8. Angelic alterity (Thomas Aquinas); chapter 9. The singular other (John Duns Scotus) -- By way of conclusion: toward an act of return.
Author: John T. Hamilton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022657282X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Get Book Here
Book Description
As the Christian doctrine of Incarnation asserts, “the Word became Flesh.” Yet, while this metaphor is grounded in Christian tradition, its varied functions far exceed any purely theological import. It speaks to the nature of God just as much as to the nature of language. In Philology of the Flesh, John T. Hamilton explores writing and reading practices that engage this notion in a range of poetic enterprises and theoretical reflections. By pressing the notion of philology as “love” (philia) for the “word” (logos), Hamilton’s readings investigate the breadth, depth, and limits of verbal styles that are irreducible to mere information. While a philologist of the body might understand words as corporeal vessels of core meaning, the philologist of the flesh, by focusing on the carnal qualities of language, resists taking words as mere containers. By examining a series of intellectual episodes—from the fifteenth-century Humanism of Lorenzo Valla to the poetry of Emily Dickinson, from Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamann to Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan—Philology of the Flesh considers the far-reaching ramifications of the incarnational metaphor, insisting on the inseparability of form and content, an insistence that allows us to rethink our relation to the concrete languages in which we think and live.
Author: Frances Gray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136165312
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Get Book Here
Book Description
How do you know anything is true? What relation is there between my psyche and your psyche, does one exist? Can we doubt everything or are some things indubitable? What does Jung have to say about body and psyche, body and mind? Cartesian Philosophy and the Flesh is an analysis and critique of interpretations of Cartesian philosophy in analytical psychology. It focuses on readings of Descartes that have important implications for understanding Jung, and analytical and existential psychology generally. Frances Gray's book raises questions about the 'place' of the body in a theory of the human psyche and about what kind of psyche, if any, is essential to concepts of human being. Gray claims that the debates around Descartes and metaphysical dualism have been oversimplified and that this has had a profound effect on conceptualizing an on-going relation between psyche and body. The book also explores the relationship between Jung's conception of the phenomenological standpoint and that of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Cartesian Philosophy and Flesh brings together Descartes’ idea of self-interrogation and self-reflection and Jung's project in The Red Book, the practice of spiritual exercises is the underpinning orientation of both men. It recommends similar practices to anyone interested in the truths of their own living. Gray’s book will be of interest to Jung scholars, and those with an interest in Jungian studies, Analytical Psychologists and Philosophers.
Author: Adam G. Cooper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191720208
Category : Gnosticism
Languages : en
Pages : 283
Get Book Here
Book Description
'Life in the Flesh' offers a new spiritual philosophy of the body, contrasting sources from the Christian tradition with contemporary voices in philosophy and theology.
Author: Mauro Carbone
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438458800
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Get Book Here
Book Description
In The Flesh of Images, Mauro Carbone begins with the point that Merleau-Ponty's often misunderstood notion of "flesh" was another way to signify what he also called "Visibility." Considering vision as creative voyance, in the visionary sense of creating as a particular presence something which, as such, had not been present before, Carbone proposes original connections between Merleau-Ponty and Paul Gauguin, and articulates his own further development of the "new idea of light" that the French philosopher was beginning to elaborate at the time of his sudden death. Carbone connects these ideas to Merleau-Ponty's continuous interest in cinema—an interest that has been traditionally neglected or circumscribed. Focusing on Merleau-Ponty's later writings, including unpublished course notes and documents not yet available in English, Carbone demonstrates both that Merleau-Ponty's interest in film was sustained and philosophically crucial, and also that his thinking provides an important resource for illuminating our contemporary relationship to images, with profound implications for the future of philosophy and aesthetics. Building on his earlier work on Marcel Proust and considering ongoing developments in optical and media technologies, Carbone adds his own philosophical insight into understanding the visual today.
Author: Mayra Rivera
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822374935
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Get Book Here
Book Description
In Poetics of the Flesh Mayra Rivera offers poetic reflections on how we understand our carnal relationship to the world, at once spiritual, organic, and social. She connects conversations about corporeality in theology, political theory, and continental philosophy to show the relationship between the ways ancient Christian thinkers and modern Western philosophers conceive of the "body" and "flesh.” Her readings of the biblical writings of John and Paul as well as the work of Tertullian illustrate how Christian ideas of flesh influenced the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault, and inform her readings of Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, and others. Rivera also furthers developments in new materialism by exploring the intersections among bodies, material elements, social arrangements, and discourses through body and flesh. By painting a complex picture of bodies, and by developing an account of how the social materializes in flesh, Rivera provides a new way to understand gender and race.
Author: Havi Carel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131548739X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 151
Get Book Here
Book Description
What is illness? Is it a physiological dysfunction, a social label, or a way of experiencing the world? How do the physical, social and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? And can there be well-being within illness? In this remarkable and thought-provoking book, Havi Carel explores these questions by weaving together the personal story of her own serious illness with insights and reflections drawn from her work as a philosopher. Carel's fresh approach to illness raises some uncomfortable questions about how we all - whether healthcare professionals or not - view the ill and challenges us to become more thoughtful. 'Illness' unravels the tension between the universality of illness and its intensely private, often lonely, nature. It offers a new way of looking at a matter that affects every one of us.
Author: Andrea J. Pitts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190062983
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Get Book Here
Book Description
"A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a politic born of necessity," writes activist Cherríe L. Moraga. This volume of new essays stages an intergenerational dialogue among philosophers to introduce and deepen engagement with U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, and to explore their "theories in the flesh." It explores specific intellectual contributions in various topics in U.S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms that stand alone and are unique and valuable; analyzes critical contributions that U.S. Latinx and Latin American interventions have made in feminist thought more generally over the last several decades; and shows the intellectual and transformative value of reading U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist theorizing. The collection features a series of essays analyzing decolonial approaches within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, including studies of the functions of gender within feminist theory, everyday modes of resistance, and methodological questions regarding the scope and breadth of decolonization as a critical praxis. Additionally, essays examine theoretical contributions to feminist discussions of selfhood, narrativity, and genealogy, as well as novel epistemic and hermeneutical approaches within the field. A number of contributors in the book address themes of aesthetics and embodiment, including issues of visual representation, queer desire, and disability within U. S. Latinx and Latin American feminisms. Together, the essays in this volume are groundbreaking and powerful contributions in the fields of U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy.
