Meaning and Embodiment

Nicholas Mowad

ISBN 10: 1438475578 / ISBN 13: 9781438475578

Published by State University of New York Press, US, 2019

About this Item

Examines Hegel's insights regarding the complexity and significance of embodiment in human life, identity, and experience.Meaning and Embodiment provides a detailed study of Hegel's anthropology to examine the place of corporeity or embodiment in human life, identity, and experience. In Hegel's view, to be human means in part to produce one's own spiritual embodiment in culture and habits. Whereas for animals nature only has meaning relative to biological drives, humans experience meaning in a way that transcends these limits, and which allows for aesthetic appreciation of beauty and sublimity, nihilistic feelings of meaninglessness, and the complex and different systems of symbolic speech and action characterizing language and culture. By elucidating the different forms of embodiment, Nicholas Mowad shows how for Hegel we are embodied in several different ways at once: as extended, subject to physical-chemical forces, living, and human. Many difficult problems in philosophy and everyday experience come down to using the right concept of embodiment. Mowad traces Hegel's account through the growth and development of the body, gender and racial difference, cycles of sleep and waking, and sensibility and mental illness.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781438475578

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Meaning and Embodiment
• Publisher: State University of New York Press, US
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1438475578
• ISBN 13: 9781438475578
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 581 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Examines Hegel's insights regarding the complexity and significance of embodiment in human life, identity, and experience.

Meaning and Embodiment provides a detailed study of Hegel's anthropology to examine the place of corporeity or embodiment in human life, identity, and experience. In Hegel's view, to be human means in part to produce one's own spiritual embodiment in culture and habits. Whereas for animals nature only has meaning relative to biological drives, humans experience meaning in a way that transcends these limits, and which allows for aesthetic appreciation of beauty and sublimity, nihilistic feelings of meaninglessness, and the complex and different systems of symbolic speech and action characterizing language and culture. By elucidating the different forms of embodiment, Nicholas Mowad shows how for Hegel we are embodied in several different ways at once: as extended, subject to physical-chemical forces, living, and human. Many difficult problems in philosophy and everyday experience come down to using the right concept of embodiment. Mowad traces Hegel's account through the growth and development of the body, gender and racial difference, cycles of sleep and waking, and sensibility and mental illness.

About the Author

Nicholas Mowad is Professor of Philosophy at Chandler-Gilbert Community College.