ISBN : 9780198823629
Experience doesn't just happen in our mind. And 'the mind' is an aspect of our whole being, not an immaterial capacity. We may think of our whole being as the body. But the idea of 'body' is subject to changing intuitions about ourselves - not everything of what we are is limited by our skin. Our awareness of experience, our phenomenology, ranges across our natural and social environment: our sense of ourselves is 'ecological', its boundaries shifting from context to context. We feel ourselves to be lost, or discover that our sense of self is an illusion; we may be angrily aware that others determine our identity on the basis of gender or appearance, or we may be integrated blissfully into the intimate presence of someone else. This book uses classical Indian texts to bring out multiple analyses of phenomenology, addressing, challenging, and re-configuring the way modern Western philosophy has tended to explore the bodily nature of human beings. A rich, inter-cultural conversation resu
Introduction: Situating Ecological Phenomenology
1 The Body in Illness and Health
2 The Gendered Body
3 The Body in Contemplation
4 The Body in Love