Challenges conventional understandings of Heidegger’s account of the body.

Following the core principle of phenomenology as a return 'to the things themselves,' Body Matters attends to the phenomena of bodily afflictions and examines them from three different standpoints: from society in general that interprets them as 'sicknesses,' from the medical professions that interpret them as 'diseases,' and from the patients themselves who interpret them as 'illnesses.' By drawing on a crucial distinction in German phenomenology between two senses of the body_the quantifiable, material body (Ksrper) and the lived-body(Leib)_the authors explore the ways in which sickness, disease, and illness are socially and historically experienced and constructed. To make their case, they draw on examples from a multiplicity of disciplines and cultures as well as a number of cases from Euro-American history. The intent is to unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions that readers may have about body troubles. These are assumptions widely held as well by medical and allied health professionals, in addition to many sociologists and philosophers of health and illness. To this end, Body Matters does not simply deconstruct prejudices of mainstream biomedicine; it also constructively envisions more humane and artful forms of therapy.

The traditional way of understanding life, as a self-appropriating and self-organizing process of not ceasing to exist, of taking care of one's own hunger, is challenged by today's unprecedented proliferation of discourses and techniques concerning the living being. This challenge entails questioning the fundamental concepts of metaphysical thinking--namely, time, finality, and, above all, being. Garrido argues that today we are in a position to repeat Nietzsche's assertion that there is no other representation of "being" than that of "living." But in order to carry out this deconstruction of ontology, we need to find new ways of asking: What is life? In this study, Garrido establishes the basic elements of the question concerning life through readings of Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida; through the discussion of scientific breakthroughs in thermodynamics and evolutionary and developmental biology; and through the reexamination of the notion of hunger in both its metaphysical and its political implications.

Examines social and historical views on sickness, disease, and illness; deconstructs assumptions people have about body troubles; and discusses humane and artful forms of therapy.

The Incarnality of Being addresses Martin Heidegger's tendency to neglect the problem of the body, an omission that is further reflected in the field of Heidegger scholarship. By addressing the corporeal dimension of human existence, author Frank Schalow uncovers Heidegger's concern for the materiality of the world. This allows for the ecological implications of Heidegger's thought to emerge, specifically, the kinship between humans and animals and the mutual interest each has for preserving the environment and the earth. By advancing the theme of the "incarnality of being," Schalow brings Heidegger's thinking to bear on various provocative questions concerning contemporary philosophy: sexuality, the intersection of human and animal life, the precarious future of the earth we inhabit, and the significance that reclaiming our embodiment has upon ethics and politics.

This book explores new phenomenological research on the structural disruptions of spatiality, temporality, and understanding in the context of anxiety and depressive disorders. It offers critiques of mainstream psychopathology, taking a transdisciplinary approach to the relationship between mental illness and self-constitution.

"It is by all means a dubious thing to depend and rest on what an author himself has brought to the forefront. The important thing is rather to give attention to those things he left shrouded in silence." Such was the methodological advice, given in 1924 by Heidegger himself, that is rigorously followed in this book, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology. The project involves the vast complex of problems that emerged around Being and Time (1927) and then continued from the time of the Marburg lecture courses (1923-1928) up to the Freiburg lectures (1928-1935), today available in the Gesamtausgabe. Heidegger's silence concerning some of his foundational sources is a fact fully recognized by those who have carefully read him. This book systematically explores and critically assesses the silences concerning Husserl, the Aristotle of Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, the Hegel of Phenomenology, Nietzsche, and even Descartes. What emerges is a systematic and original reinterpretation of 'fundamental ontology' focused on the self-understanding of the human Dasein as the key for understanding the various meanings of Being and the entire deconstructed history of ontology. The project culminated in the pretensions to absoluteness rampant in modern metaphysics, with its peak and paroxysm to be found in The Introduction to Metaphysics (1935). In regard to the 'Heidegger affair', this book, which was begun well before the present turmoil, shows both the ambiguity and coherence of Heidegger's involvement with the Nazis, and, for the first time, exposes the work of the young Heidegger to a rigorous and wholesome internal criticism. By delineating the origins, the shifts, and the final outcome from within his own field, phenomenology, it allows us to reflect on this difficult question at its depth and origin.

Is materialism right to claim that the world of everyday-life experience - the phenomenal world - is nothing but an illusion produced in physical reality, notably in the brain? Or is Merleau-Ponty right when he defends the fundamental character of the phenomenal world while rejecting physical realism? Jasper van Buuren addresses these questions by exploring the nature of the body proper in Merleau-Ponty and Plessner, arguing that physical and phenomenal realism are not mutually exclusive but complementary. The argument includes a close examination of the relationships between scientific and pre-scientific perspectives, between living and non-living things, and between humans and animals.

Existential Medicine explores the recent impact that the philosophies of existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics have had on the health care professions. A growing body of scholarship drawing primarily on the work of Martin Heidegger and other influential twentieth-century figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Hans-Georg Gadamer has shaped contemporary research in the fields of bioethics, narrative medicine, gerontology, enhancement medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy, and palliative care, among others. By regarding the human body as a decontextualized object, the prevailing paradigm of medical science often overlooks the body as it is lived. As a result, it fails to critically engage the experience of illness and the core questions of ‘what it means’ and ‘what it feels like’ to be ill. With work from emerging and renowned scholars in the field, this collection aims to shed light on these issues and the crucial need for clinicians to situate the experience of illness within the context of a patient’s life-world. To this end, Existential Medicine offers a valuable resource for philosophers and medical humanists as well as health care practitioners.