Recovering the Body : A Philosophical Story
209 pages
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209 pages
English

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Following the metaphysical and epistemological threads that have led to our modern conception of the body as a machine, the book explores views of the body in the history of philosophy. Its central thesis is that the Cartesian paradigm, which has dominated the modern conception of the body (including the development and practice of medicine), offers an incomplete and even inaccurate picture. This picture has become a reductio ad absurdum, which, through such current trends as the practice of extreme body modification, and futuristic visions of downloading consciousness into machines, could lead to the disappearance of the biological body. Presenting Spinoza’s philosophy of the body as the road not followed, the author asks what Spinoza would think of some of our contemporary body visions. It also looks to two more holistic approaches to the body that offer hope of recovering its true meaning: the practice of yoga and alternative medicine. The metaphysical analysis is accompanied throughout by a tripartite historical and epistemological analysis: the body as an obstacle to knowledge (exemplified by Plato and our modern-day futurists), the body as an object of knowledge (exemplified by Descartes and modern scientific medicine); and the body as a source of knowledge (exemplified by the Stoics, and the philosophy of yoga).



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Publié par
Date de parution 08 juin 2013
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9780776620817
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0625€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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RECOVERING THE BODY


RECOVERING THE BODY
A Philosophical Story
CAROL COLLIER
The University of Ottawa Press 2013


© University of Ottawa Press, 2013
The University of Ottawa Press acknowledges with gratitude the support extended to its publishing list by Heritage Canada through the Canada Book Fund, by the Canada Council for the Arts, by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and by the University of Ottawa.
We also gratefully acknowledge the University of Sudbury’s Research and Publication Fund, whose financial support has contributed to the publication of this book.
www.press.uottawa.ca
eBook development: WildElement.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Collier, Carol, 1943-
Recovering the body [electronic resource] : a philosophical story / Carol Collier.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-0-7766-2080-0 (PDF).--ISBN 978-0-7766-2081-7 (HTML)
1. Human body (Philosophy)--History. I. Title.
B105.B64C64 2013 128’.6 C2013-900539-0


To Mackenzie, Alli, Graeme and Eric


TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I
The Road to Mechanism: Ancient Greece to the Scientific Revolution
CHAPTER 1
Body and Soul at War: Plato
CHAPTER II
Body and Nature: Aristotle and the Stoics
CHAPTER III
The Resurrection of the Body: Christianity
CHAPTER IV
From Astrology to the Cult of Dissection: The Renaissance
CHAPTER V
The Body-Machine: Descartes
CHAPTER VI
The Road Not Followed: Spinoza
PART II
The Limits of Mechanism: Contemporary Problems and Solutions
CHAPTER VII
The Legacy of Mechanism: The Fragmenting and Disappearing Body
CHAPTER VIII
Recovering the Body: Yoga
CHAPTER IX
Recovering the Body: Alternative Medicine
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX


FOREWORD
N ever has it been more urgent to be enlightened by a philosophical reflection on the body. Confronted with such crucial issues as organ traffic, organ donation, assisted suicide and biomedical research, citizens, politicians and policy makers certainly need solid scientific evidence to justify their decisions. But, first and foremost, actors in the public forum need to identify what the real issues are. This cannot be accomplished without getting at a problem’s philosophical underpinnings. Too often, solutions address only pseudo-problems. Take this line of reasoning, for example: there is a shortage of organs; therefore we should implement policies and programs for the purpose of increasing the availability of organs. While this assertion makes sense in and of itself, most politicians, policy makers and citizens fail to see that this kind of assertion results from a philosophical discourse on the body, which itself rarely becomes the subject of an enlightened public discussion. Why? Because philosophy itself is part of the problem.
First of all, philosophy has obliterated the question of the body. This obliteration, far from being a simple oversight, is the result of philosophy as a system of inquiry. A systemic approach to the philosophical treatment of the body over time, such as Dr. Collier so brilliantly outlines for her readers, clearly shows the impact of modernity as a turning point (or point of no return) beyond which the body is merely understood as a discrete object of knowledge like any other material object. No doubt the modern turning point, and the vision of the body that ensued, would allow for the formidable development of science and technology. But has it not become too evident that modernity came at a hefty price? This price can be intuited from the many profound ethical conundrums in which we now find ourselves.
To write a philosophical book about the body, and to try, in so doing, to recuperate some philosophical views that may contribute to the reconstitution of the body, as we would a precious work of art, is not only courageous: it is indeed truly visionary. The body is not a scientific or social construct; it is a meaningful fact. The body is always someone’s body. It is experienced or “lived,” as phenomenologists say. My body signifies me in a unique way. It announces and proclaims my existence with authenticity. Here I am—body and flesh! My body is also a microcosm within a macrocosm. Bodies discovered in common trenches signify many persons’ ultimate fates within violent political systems possibly sustained by a global political community. Someone’s tumour is not only a malignant organization of cells; it is the result of a dynamic relationship with her environment, habits and genes. Surrogate motherhood is not only hosting a baby within a womb, and transplanting a lung does not simply mean transferring one person’s organ into another’s body. Life involves an intricate network of interconnected forces (objective) and intentions (subjective). As a society, we must stop making decisions as if we were dealing with discrete pieces of a puzzle. To paraphrase Ricoeur (and no doubt Aristotle), real ethics begins when one has to discriminate not between black and white, but between grey and grey.
Finally, by capturing philosophically relevant meanings that emanate from alternative medicine and traditional yoga practices, Dr. Collier courageously takes up Stephen Toulmin’s project to “humanize modernity.” As a philosopher and a concerned citizen, I am greatly indebted to philosophers like Dr. Collier, who strive to undertake such a philosophically sustainable endeavour.
Chantal Beauvais, PhD
Rector and Member, Faculty of Philosophy, Saint Paul University


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T his book is the result of many years of reflection on the body in philosophy and medicine, but its structure developed over the last decade through my teaching, first at St. Paul University in Ottawa and then at the University of Sudbury. I am grateful to Chantal Beauvais, who, in 2002 as head of the Philosophy Department at St. Paul’s, encouraged me to teach a summer course on the body-machine. The students, who came from different disciplines, responded very well to the philosophical and historical aspects of the course, and participated with great enthusiasm in the second part of the course dealing with contemporary questions of the body, all of which helped me in the development of Part II of this book.
I am also grateful to my colleagues in the Philosophy Department of the University of Sudbury (Paolo Biondi, Réal Fillion, Lucien Pelletier and Rachel Haliburton) for their support, encouragement and flexibility in allowing me to develop my body-machine course further under the rubric of Topics in Early Modern Philosophy. I am grateful to all the students who enthusiastically participated in this course over several years, many of whom provided fresh ideas regarding contemporary attitudes toward the body. I am also grateful to those same philosophy colleagues, and to the University of Sudbury, for supporting my sabbatical project in 2010, during which time I was able to complete the manuscript.
For the places and spaces in which I was able to write during that sabbatical year, I am grateful to the Yasodhara Ashram at Kootenay Lake, BC, for providing both teachings and tranquillity; to Beth Penny for her peaceful Kootenay cabin with its ever-inspiring view of the mountains; to Ilse and Giles Stevenson for the use of their beautiful Victoria house; to Gwynneth Evans and Deb Cowley for the use of their Ottawa houses; and to Larry Heald and Joanne Dale for their hospitality and moral support during my many trips to Toronto over years of research and writing.
Thanks to the many friends and colleagues who read and commented on my project at different stages and who provided comments, support and helpful criticism of various chapters. Special thanks to Danièle Letocha and Syliane Charles for their helpful support at the very beginning of my proposal; to Swami Sivananda, Carlean Fisher and Patricia Hurdle for reading Chapter 8; to Paolo Biondi for helpful comments on Chapters 1 and 2; to Réal Fillion and Erik Stephenson for sharing their knowledge of Spinoza and keeping me on track in Chapter 6; to Alicia Batten for correcting my errors in Chapter 3; and to Rachel Haliburton for commenting on Chapter 7—as well as for many supportive conversations along the way. Thanks to Peter Saunders for his help in developing the proposal and presenting it to publishers, to Jen Groundwater for her very professional editing assistance, and to the reviewers at the University of Ottawa Press for their helpful comments. A special thanks to the University of Sudbury for financial support from its Research and Publication Fund.


INTRODUCTION
T he purpose of this book is to tell a story, to uncover the history of the body in our Western philosophical tradition leading up to the modern conception of the body as a machine. It is also a work of recovery, bringing to light many aspects of this history that have been lost or forgotten in the West since the Scientific Revolution. At a time when our biological knowledge of the body has never been greater, a philosophical void exists in our understanding of the body’s relation to mind, soul, nature and cosmos.
Surprisingly, this is not a story that has already been told—at least not by philosophers and not in the English language. 1 Philosophers have had much more time for the soul and the mind (the latter being the modern conception of the former), and even now, in philosophy of mind or cognitive science debates continue as to whether consciousness or mind actually exists. The body

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