Overview

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad offers illuminating new perspectives on contemporary phenomenological theories of body and subjectivity, based on studies of classical Indian texts that deal with bodily subjectivity. Examining four texts from different genres - a medical handbook, epic dialogue, a manual of Buddhist practice, and erotic poetry - he argues for a 'phenomenological ecology' of bodily subjectivity in health, gender, contemplation, and lovemaking. An ecology is a continuous and dynamic system of interrelationships between elements, in which the salience accorded to some type of relationship clarifies how the elements it relates are to be identified. The paradigm of ecological phenomenology obviates the need to choose between apparently incompatible perspectives of the human. The delineation of body is arrived at by working back phenomenologically from the world of experience, with the acknowledgement that the point of arrival - a conception of what counts as bodiliness - is dependent upon the exact motivation for attending to experience, the areas of experience attended to, and the expressive tools available to the phenomenologist. Ecological phenomenology is pluralistic, yet integrates the ways experience is attended to and studied, permitting apparently inconsistent intuitions about bodiliness to be explored in novel ways. Rather than seeing particular framings of our experience as in tension with each other, we should see each such framing as playing its own role according to the local descriptive and analytic concern of a text.

Full Product Details

Author:   Pofessor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy, Lancaster University)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 23.20cm
Weight:   0.336kg
ISBN:  

9780192856920

ISBN 10:   0192856928
Pages:   224
Publication Date:   15 December 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Situating Ecological Phenomenology 1: The Body in Illness and Health 2: The Gendered Body 3: The Body in Contemplation 4: The Body in Love

Reviews

Extraordinary, demanding, and often moving book * Sonam Kachru, University of Virginia, Philosophy East & West * Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad's provocative book comprises four excellent independent studies in comparative philosophy. Each can be picked up in any order and read independently of the others. ... The exegeses of the four texts are compelling, and Ram-Prasad is successful in showing us their contemporary relevance. * Arun Iyer, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews * In this excellent book Ram-Prasad (comparative religion and philosophy, Lancaster Univ., UK) asks how the body, as a conceptual category, is central to human experience. Summing up: Recommended * CHOICE *

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad's provocative book comprises four excellent independent studies in comparative philosophy. Each can be picked up in any order and read independently of the others. ... The exegeses of the four texts are compelling, and Ram-Prasad is successful in showing us their contemporary relevance. * Arun Iyer, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews * In this excellent book Ram-Prasad (comparative religion and philosophy, Lancaster Univ., UK) asks how the body, as a conceptual category, is central to human experience. Summing up: Recommended * CHOICE *

Author Information

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of six books and some fifty papers. Divine Self, Human Self (Bloomsbury) won the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies Best Book Award 2011-15.

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