Early in the first volume of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomeno logie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie, Edmund Husserl stated concisely the significance and scope of the problem with which this present study is concerned. When we reflect on how it is that consciousness, which is itself absolute in relation to the world, can yet take on the character of transcendence, how it can become mundanized, We see straightaway that it can do that only by means of a certain participation in transcendence in the first, originary sense, which is manifestly the transcendence of material Nature. Only by means of the experiential relation to the animate organism does consciousness become really human and animal (tierischen), and only thereby does it achieve a place in the space and in the time of Nature. l Consciousness can become "worldly" only by being embodied within the world as part of it. In so far as the world is material Nature, consciousness must partake of the transcendence of material Nature. That is to say, its transcendence is manifestly an embodiment in a material, corporeal body. Consciousness, thus, takes on the characteristic of being "here and now" (ecceity) by means of experiential (or, more accurately, its intentive) relation to that corporeal being which embodies it. Accordingly, that there is a world for consciousness is a conse quence in the first instance of its embodiment by 2 that corporeal body which is for it its own animate organism.

Perfect for use at advanced undergraduate and graduate level, this is the first text to offer students a unified narrative regarding the place of the body in Western thinking. The book investigates the ways in which the fact of human embodiment makes the notion of ambiguity central to all major areas of philosophy. The body is both active and passive, powerful and vulnerable, and it provides both access through perception and limitation through localisation. As such, it fundamentally informs ontological, political, ethical and epistemological issues. The book takes as its starting point the devaluation of the body by philosophers from Plato to Descartes and then focuses on several dimensions of the body as investigated by post-Kantian philosophy through a discussion of the intentional body, embodied cognition and the politicization of the body. The book engages with both the ‘Continental’ and ‘Anglo-American’ philosophical traditions and includes a broad range of sources and texts. The unified approach and clear writing make this lively text accessible to those working in other disciplines such as Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Gender Studies.

This edited volume seeks to integrate research and scholarship on the topic of embodiment, with the idea being that thinking and feeling are often grounded in more concrete representations related to perception and action. The book centers on psychological approaches to embodiment and includes chapters speaking to development as well as clinical issues, though a larger number focus on topics related to cognition and neuroscience as well as social and personality psychology. These topical chapters are linked to theory-based chapters centered on interoception, grounded cognition, conceptual metaphor, and the extended mind thesis. Further, a concluding section speaks to critical issues such as replication concerns, alternative interpretations, and future directions. The final result is a carefully conceived product that is a comprehensive and well-integrated volume on the psychology of embodiment. The primary audience for this book is academic psychologists from many different areas of psychology (e.g., social, developmental, cognitive, clinical). The secondary audience consists of disciplines in which ideas related to embodied cognition figure prominently, such as counseling, education, biology, and philosophy.

In recent years there has been an increasing awareness that a comprehensive understanding of language, cognitive and affective processes, and social and interpersonal phenomena cannot be achieved without understanding the ways these processes are grounded in bodily states. The term 'embodiment' captures the common denominator of these developments, which come from several disciplinary perspectives ranging from neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology, and affective sciences. For the first time, this volume brings together these varied developments under one umbrella and furnishes a comprehensive overview of this intellectual movement in the cognitive-behavioral sciences. The chapters review current work on relations of the body to thought, language use, emotion and social relationships as presented by internationally recognized experts in these areas.