Philosophy of the Body

Course content

This course provides a survey into the western philosophical treatments of the body in different historical periods. Beginning with Ancient Greek philosophy, we trace how the body is understood in relation to thought, psuche, desire, and knowledge, the subjugation of the body and its separation from the soul in Medieval thought, the mechanistic and vitalistic accounts of the body in 17th century, the phenomenology and genealogy of the body as gendered and racialized, and the status of the body in the age of posthumanism.