History of the Body

Roy Porter's History of the Body puts the body (i.e., human being) back in history. He examines three key areas of knowledge regarding the body which help to lend a broader interpretation to social change. He argues that traditional Classical and Judaeo-Christian interpretations of the body have relegated the body to a minimal aspect of significance. These modes of thinking have each "advanced a fundamentally dualistic vision of man, understood as an often uneasy alliance of mind and body, psyche and soma; and both traditions, in their different ways and for different reasons, have elevated the mind or soul and disparaged the body" (Porter 206). In other words, the significance of the body has been minimalized over time because of ideologies which for reasons of power and politics have ignored its significance in the search for an understanding of human mean

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Category: Philosophy - H