[ENDED] N. 57 - Beyond Dualism: Configurations of the Body in Modernity

Article submissions are now open for issue 57 of the journal O que nos faz pensar, published by the Philosophy department at PUC-Rio, in a special issue entitled “Beyond Dualism: Configurations of the Body in Modernity”.

The dossier will be organized by Clara Castro (PUC-Rio) and Pedro Galé (UFSCar).

 

Details of the proposal:

In the first century BC, Lucretius explains to his interlocutor Mêmio that “there are bodies unseen from the wind, / since in shape and manner they seem to emulate even / great rivers, these that have bodies manifest” (On the nature of things, transl. Rodrigo Tadeu Gonçalves, Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2021, l. I, v. 295-297). Through a long philosophical and epistolary poem, the Latin epicurean delightfully intends to teach the fundamental principles of his master: nothing comes from nothing, nothing returns to nothing, everything is body or void.

Bodies can be primeval, eternal and invisible like the wind, but they can also, by combining, manifest and destroy themselves, like the great rivers that dry up. The manuscripts of On the Nature of Things, long lost, were rediscovered in the 15th century and became a crucial reference in the Renaissance and Modernity. Although the impression is common that the modern period was founded by Descartes outside the uncertainties of imperceptible or even sensible bodies, empirical sciences or tradition, there are many modern philosophies interested in the reflections of Antiquity and their reworking by the Renaissance. Atomism is an exemplary case of this interest, since not a few philosophers, by basking in the honey of Lucretius' verses, ended up disseminating this nectar in some way in their own works.

In the second half of the 18th century - a period marked by a precise conceptual framework, the critique of Cartesian dualism - the fascination with Lucretius' art seems to be exacerbated. This is when philosophy approaches the natural sciences (physiology, anatomy, chemistry, botany, etc.) and rethinks the very idea of experience. The negative sense reserved for sensation by the rationalists is reversed into a positivity, a primordial element from which all knowledge is structured. Once an extensive substance, subject to the thinking soul, the body becomes an effect, a product of processes that configure it, undo it and recompose it in the thread of experience. Philosophy and pleasure, whether aesthetic or erotic, come together to show that metaphysics is also made of the body, in the body and for the body.

This dossier aims to discuss the ways in which the idea of the body has been configured in Modernity. It is interested in reflecting on the following thematic axes:

1. atoms, corpuscles, mixed;
2. nature, animal, animalization;
3. organic machine, mechanical machine;
4. organism, organization, mechanicism;
5. sensitivity, sensation, feeling;
6. imagination, eroticism, literature, arts;
7. experimental philosophy, empirical sciences;
8. a posteriori system/metaphysics.

 

The journal O que nos faz pensar is rated Qualis A3 in the new CAPES classification.

The deadline for submissions is August 17rd.

Issue 57 is due to be published in December/25.