Précis: Experience Embodied

ABSTRACT

This précis provides a summary of the major arguments of Experience Embodied together with an overview of the three parts and individual chapters. By examining the concept of experience in the theorizing of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, and Kant, this book sets out to complicate one of the most firmly established narratives of early modern philosophy. In its traditional form, this narrative focuses on the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and possesses a strong epistemological focus. Through this, it fails to acknowledge that the concept of experience was discussed in a much broader philosophical context, which included moral, social, political, and historical considerations. Experience Embodied demonstrates that the six philosophers examined constructively engaged with the fact that experience affects body and mind, and shapes what we can think and do. More generally, the book shows that during the early modern period a positive conception of the mind’s embodiment and principal malleability through the influences of artifice and nature was not only available, but also frequently used to counterbalance standard claims about the negative impact of passions, instincts, and undesirable social influences.

KEYWORDS:

• empiricism-rationalism
• affect
• sensibility
• self-formation
• use of mind
• agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See for instance Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, Question 2, Art. 3, 19, and ad 19, in Aquinas (1859, 9:28, 31).

2. This is a very rough sketch and more fine-grained distinctions, such as that between content- and belief- empiricism, have been introduced to generate a more nuanced picture; see for instance Ayers (1991), and Markie and Folescu (2023). Also see Anstey and Vanzo’s recent monograph (Anstey and Vanzo 2023) for an integrated account that challenges the validity of the empiricism and rationalism distinction.

3. I would like to thank Ruth Boeker for the organisation of a symposium where I had the opportunity to discuss my book with commentators and graduate students in November 2022 at the University College Dublin. It was a truly inspiring event and gave me much to think about. I am grateful to everyone who was present and contributed. I would also like to thank Ruth and Graham Clay for editing the current special issue to make the discussions of the symposium available in print.