Items related to Body and World
Body and World is the definitive edition of a book that shouldnow take its place as a major contribution to contemporary existentialphenomenology. Samuel Todes goes beyond Martin Heidegger and MauriceMerleau-Ponty in his description of how independent physical natureand experience are united in our bodily action. His account allows himto preserve the authority of experience while avoiding the tendencytoward idealism that threatens both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.Todes emphasizes the complex structure of the human body ;front/back asymmetry, the need to balance in a gravitational field, and so forth ;and the role that structure plays in producing the spatiotemporal field of experience and in making possible objective knowledge of the objects in it. He shows that perception involves nonconceptual, but nonetheless objective forms of judgment. One can think of Body and World as fleshing out Merleau-Ponty's project while presciently relating it to the current interest in embodiment, not only in philosophy but also in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and anthropology. Todes's work opens new ways of thinking about problems such as the relation of perception to thought and the possibility of knowing an independent reality ;problems that have occupied philosophers since Kant and still concern analytic and continental philosophy.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Samuel Todes was Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University at the time of his death in 1994. Body and World is based on his dissertation, written in 1963 and published in 1990 in the series Harvard Dissertations in Philosophy under the title The Human Body as Material Subject of the World.
Review:
"A much needed and insightful account that stays with the phenomenological evidence, a rich phenomenological resource." Shaun Gallagher The Times Literary (UK)
"How did masturbation, arguably the safest sexual act, come to be seen as a moral aberration with ghastly physical effects? Laqueur is persuasive. An engaging writer." Briefly Noted The New Yorker
"This remarkable book, originally prepared as Samuel Todes's dissertation, delves deeply into issues that have only now, forty years later, become central concerns in epistemology, philosophy of action, and philosophy of mind. These issues had been broached by Husserl in manuscripts and had been followed up by Heidegger and above all by Merleau-Ponty, but Todes carries the discussion further with careful analyses and original ideas. He discusses how the body has anticipations that can be satisfied or frustrated, and shows how these processes are of crucial importance for clarifying the nonconceptual elements in knowledge. He also throws much-needed light on the percipient as a bodily subject, on the unity of the person and the unity of the object experienced. The book is a classic in the sense that it remains as thought-provoking and illuminating today as when it was written."--Dagfinn Føllesdal, Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy, Stanford UniversityPlease note: The first "o" of the endorser's last name has a slash through it.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherMit Pr
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 0262201356
- ISBN 13 9780262201353
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages370
- Rating
(No Available Copies)
Search Books: Create a WantIf you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!
Create a Want