Course Outline Part 1 (Week 1 - Week 3) - Body vs Mind? 1 Introduction: the body as a philosophical problem 2 Descartes and the question of the body's and mind's nature (Reading: Second Meditation) 3 Descartes and the body-mind dualism (Reading: Sixth Meditation) Part 2 (Week 4 - Week 12) - Phenomenology(-ies) and the body 4 Husserl. The lived body (Leib) and the body as object (Körper) (Reading: Fifth Meditation) 5 Husserl. Body and bodies (Reading: Fifth Meditation) 6 Ricoeur. Body as the total field of motivation (Reading: Freedom and Nature. The Voluntary and the Involuntary, Part I, Chapter 2) 7 Ricoeur. Bodily spontaneity (Reading: Freedom and Nature. The Voluntary and the Involuntary, Part II, Chapter 2) 8 Merleau-Ponty. Perception and the body (Reading: Phenomenology of Perception, Part I, section 1, section 2) 9 Merleau-Ponty. Body, movement and space (Reading: Phenomenology of Perception, Part I, section 3) 10 Herny. Body and affectivity (Reading: Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, Chapter 2) 11 Henry. Body, moving and sensing (Reading: Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, Chapter 3) Part 3 (Week 12 - Week 14) Phenomenology of embodiment: new directions 12 Ted Toadvine. Body and the experience of nature (Reading: Limits of the Flesh: The Role of Reflection in David Abram's Eco-phenomenology) 13 David Abram. Body and earthly cosmology (Reading: Between the body and the breathing earth: a reply to Ted Toadvine) 14 Recapitulation and conclusion
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The body is surely a central topic in contemporary philosophy. However, it does not mean that the issue of the body is not considered in the whole history of Western philosophy. On the contrary, the problem of the body has attracted significant attention of many philosophers belonging to different schools of thought from the classical antiquity (e.g., Plato, Aristote, Plotinus, etc.), through the medieval period (e.g., St. Augustine, St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas, etc.), up to modern philosophy (e.g., Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, etc.). The common thread running through all these perspectives is the complex question of the body-soul and body-mind distinction and the possibility of their interaction. Undoubtedly, contemporary philosophers continue to wrestle wit the problems generated by this difficult query. In what consist, then, the originality of the contemporary analysis of the body? Who are the major figures who have contributed to the development of renewed theories of the body? How these reflections can be involved into current interdisciplinary debates (e.g., environmental studies, cognitive sciences, bioethics, etc.)? In order to answer to these fundamental questions, this course will focus on the topic of the body as development through the phenomenological movement.
The course will be divided into three parts. (1) The first part will be dedicated to the reading of Descartes' Second Meditation and Sixth Meditation as related to the analysis of body's and mind's respective nature, the problem of the distinction between body and mind and the possibility of their connection. (2) The second part will present four phenomenological approaches to the topic of the body as challenges to Descartes' dualistic account of body and mind as separate substances. Beginning with Husserl's famous distinction between the "lived body" (Leib) and the "physical body" (Körper), phenomenology of embodiment takes different directions according to the specific interests pursued by phenomenological thinkers. The course will consider the topic of the body as inserted within the discussion of the will (Ric?ur), perception (Merleau-Ponty), immanence and transcendence (Henry). (3) The third part will deal with the extension of the phenomenological analysis of the body to the eco-phenomenological debate as one among many other fields using the resources of phenomenology. Specifically, the topic of the body will be considered in relation to the problem of human being's place in nature with reference to the essays of David Abram and Ted Toadvine.
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