This Is My Body: Philosophical Reflections on Embodiment in a Wesleyan Spirit

The body of Christ. The body of the anorexic. The altered body. The mutilated body. The Eucharist. Canonical Western thought has had an uneasy relationship with the flesh from Plato forward. Western philosophy has spent its time dwelling upon ideation, perception, cognition, and recollection, and has pursued, de facto if not de jure, a duality of mind and body that continues to this day. Western theology has followed suit, either viewing the body as humiliation, prison, or site of sin. However, movements in the twentieth century--philosophical, theological, and scientific--have all issued challenges to the longstanding tradition. These challenges invite us to reconsider long-held beliefs about cognition, the body, and human experience in the world. In particular, Wesleyan theology and philosophy are called to address our inheritance and to move beyond it. This Is My Body provides a collection of essays addressing the body from broadly Wesleyan, Christian, and philosophical perspectives, examining Wesley's engagement with the body, embodied epistemologies, the body and the Church, and the altered body in relation to Christian Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience.

John Thomas Brittingham is a Teaching Fellow at Greenville College in Illinois. He is the author of several essays engaging philosophy, embodiment, and popular culture.

Christina M. Smerick is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Greenville College in Illinois. She is the author of Jean-Luc Nancy and Christian Thought: The Bodies of Christ, forthcoming from Lexington Books.