Body And Reality

Download or read book Body and Reality written by Jasper van Buuren and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2018-03-31 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.