front cover of The Absent Body
The Absent Body
Drew Leder
University of Chicago Press, 1990
The body plays a central role in shaping our experience of the world. Why, then, are we so frequently oblivious to our own bodies? We gaze at the world, but rarely see our own eyes. We may be unable to explain how we perform the simplest of acts. We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is absent—forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured.

In part 1, Leder explores a wide range of bodily functions with an eye to structures of concealment and alienation. He discusses not only perception and movement, skills and tools, but a variety of "bodies" that philosophers tend to overlook: the inner body with its anonymous rhythms; the sleeping body into which we nightly lapse; the prenatal body from which we first came to be. Leder thereby seeks to challenge "primacy of perception." In part 2, Leder shows how this phenomenology allows us to rethink traditional concepts of mind and body. Leder argues that Cartesian dualism exhibits an abiding power because it draws upon life-world experiences. Descartes' corpus is filled with disruptive bodies which can only be subdued by exercising "disembodied" reason. Leder explores the origins of this notion of reason as disembodied, focusing upon the hidden corporeality of language and thought. In a final chapter, Leder then proposes a new ethic of embodiment to carry us beyond Cartesianism.

This original, important, and accessible work uses examples from the author's medical training throughout. It will interest all those concerned with phenomenology, the philosophy of mind, or the Cartesian tradition; those working in the health care professions; and all those fascinated by the human body.
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front cover of How to Think Impossibly
How to Think Impossibly
About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else
Jeffrey J. Kripal
University of Chicago Press, 2024
A mind-bending invitation to experience the impossible as fundamentally human.
 

From precognitive dreams and telepathic visions to near-death experiences, UFO encounters, and beyond, so-called impossible phenomena are not supposed to happen. But they do happen—all the time. Jeffrey J. Kripal asserts that the impossible is a function not of reality but of our everchanging assumptions about what is real. How to Think Impossibly invites us to think about these fantastic (yet commonplace) experiences as an essential part of being human, expressive of a deeply shared reality that is neither mental nor material but gives rise to both. Thinking with specific individuals and their extraordinary experiences in vulnerable, open, and often humorous ways, Kripal interweaves humanistic and scientific inquiry to foster an awareness that the fantastic is real, the supernatural is super natural, and the impossible is possible.
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Kings of Disaster
Dualism, Centralism and the Scapegoat King in Southeastern Sudan
Simon Simonse
Michigan State University Press, 2018
The long-awaited, revised, and illustrated edition of Simon Simonse’s study of the Rainmakers of the Nilotic Sudan marks a breakthrough in anthropological thinking on African political systems. Taking his inspiration from René Girard’s theory of consensual scapegoating, the author shows that the longstanding distinction of states and stateless societies as two fundamentally different political types does not hold. Centralized and segmentary systems only differ in the relative emphasis put on the victimary role of the king as compared with that of enemy. Kings of Disaster proposes an elegant and powerful solution to the vexed problem of regicide.
 
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front cover of Mind, Matter, and Nature
Mind, Matter, and Nature
James D. Madden
Catholic University of America Press, 2013
Written for students, Mind, Matter, and Nature presumes no prior philosophical training on the part of the reader. The book nevertheless holds the arguments discussed to rigorous standards and is conversant with recent literature, thus making it useful as well to more advanced students and professionals interested in a resource on Thomistic hylomorphism in the philosophy of mind.
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