Annotation
When Friedrich Nietzsche stated in the late nineteenth century that philosophy suffers from oblivion of the body and proclaimed that “there is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom” he started a paradigmatic change that echoes still today in philosophy. In this class we will read Nietzsche’s texts about the significance of the body as well as texts from Helmuth Plessner and Emmanuel Levinas who took Nietzsche’s claim serious and developed their philosophical-ethical approaches guided by the experience of the lived body. By studying these texts we will discuss many problems that arise together with the paradigm of embodiment: what means identity?
What, and how, is the self? How can consciousness and reason be explained? How can one differ between a philosophy and a science of the body?