Metaphysics of corporeality: concept of body in a philosophical discourse: Kyiv, Naukova dumka, 2001, 340 p.

Synopsis

The book is devoted to one of the leading topics of contemporary philosophical discourse - the problem of corporeality. It is the first systematic work in national philosophy on this issue. It thoroughly analyses the formation of the modern discourse of the body and identifies its main stages, which reflect critical reflection, negation and refutation of the metaphysical principle of human desomatisation inherent in modern philosophy. The fundamental role of corporeality in the constitution of social reality and major socio-cultural phenomena is comprehensively considered. The author's concept takes into account the theoretical achievements of a wide range of contemporary Western studies.

            The book has a debatable character and encourages further thinking about the latest transformations and guidelines of philosophical thinking in the early twenty-first century.

CONTENTS

Preface

The Body as a Subject of Western Metaphysics (Instead of an Introduction)

Part I

The Anthropological Turn in Modern Philosophy

1. The metaphysical rejection of the body in modern philosophy
2. Opposition to the principle of desomatisation in the philosophy of modernity
3. Shaking the foundations of the philosophy of self-consciousness and rebellion against rationality in the philosophical search of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Excursion A. Body – Disease – Death (on Kierkegaard's Analytics of the Existential of Despair)

1. Metaphysical recognition and justification of corporeality in the philosophical research of the first half of the twentieth century.
2. The Concept of the Body in Philosophical Studies of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century.

Part II

Socio-cultural explications of corporeality

1. Somatic projections of cultural and social forms

Excursion B. Corporeality in the scope of archaic culture

1. The human body as part of religious experience

Excursion C. Feminist criticism of the Bible

1. Social structure and anthropological type. The totalitarian demand to renounce one's body and its overcoming

Excursion D. Russian discourse on sexuality and the «Soviet» totalitarian body

1. Self-identification of the individual: major anthropological events

Excursion E. Cultural repression and the flash image of the child

1. Three contemporary challenges to corporeality: ecological crisis, virtual reality, feminism

Excursion F. Posthuman bodies: the transformation of cultural stereotypes

Afterword

Notes

References