Philosophy In The Flesh

Download or read book Philosophy In The Flesh written by George Lakoff and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 1999-10-08 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Philosophy In The Flesh written by George Lakoff and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reexamines the Western philosophical tradition, looking at the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self.

Download or read book God, the Flesh, and the Other written by Emmanuel Falque and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Philology of the Flesh written by John T. Hamilton and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cartesian Philosophy and the Flesh written by Frances Gray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Poetics of the Flesh written by Mayra Rivera and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Life in the Flesh written by Adam G. Cooper and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '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.