'Philosophy in the Flesh' and Embodied Realism- Antecedents and Problems

'Philosophy in the Flesh' and Embodied Realism- antecedents and problems.

Regarding the Lakoff/Johnson requirement of "thought that works in the world", two questions arise: First, would other analyses of "action in the world" be considered examples of embodied realism at work, even though the method as philosophical stance is unstated- unattributed? Second, I think that the aim of Embodied Realism- of thinking that works in the world- is heading in the right direction, but aren't there already examples of systems of Embodied Realism?

1) Kant- Isn't Judgment a thinking that works in the world, and as Kant calls Judgment the faculty of pleasure and pain. Kant, reread through the "embodied" formulation of the sensus communis stumbled upon by Adorno- "the physical moment says that suffering ought not to be", and through the derivation of the basis of respect in the critique of judgment of "our mutually dependent pathological nature". The notion of "purpose" in Kant roots desire squarely through the Critique of Judgment.

Read Kantian Morality now through the prism of an "embodied" sensus communis. The categorical imperative is then the dictum from common suffering, the forward expression of what Strauss roots as 'the basic claim' of natural law, elaborated by Ricoeur and myself.

This then makes the notion of autonomy, not "radical" as suggested in Charles Taylor's Hegel- 'Aims of a New Epoch', but natural and constitutive of a common human condition.

This reading was always present but spread throughout the 'Foundations of a Metaphysics of Morals, Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Critique of Judgment, and Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (which mentions the results of the radical evil of "self love", as the suffering of others.)

Read then this way, Strauss' concept of the basis of Natural Right is contained within Kant.

Of course, then, it is appropriate to read the passive contemplation of form as being "struck by" the object in the judgment of the beautiful, and also to read the reordering that occurs in the faculties as "being moved by" what is being received by the senses.

2)Freud through Ricoeur- The work of Freud; translated through Ricoeur's 'Freud and Philosophy'; in the functions of the pleasure principle, the death instinct, and cathexes, expressed through the "unearthed" symbols of the dreamwork.

After all, in 'The Conflict of Interpretations' Ricoeur uses Lakoff and Johnson's exact terminology, but in a different way, in describing Freud's work as an "archaeology of the subject". And what are the "bones" that we find- the markings of desire- embodied desire? The expressed symbols of the dreamwork, the "skeleton" of which Freud critically depicts, and which Ricoeur elaborates in phenomenological description. Their exact method, in reverse, as the expression of the symbols of the dreamwork in the narrative, is a fact, in the exact same sense as their exploratory methodology.

3) Doesn't Ricouer assume such a stance in Time and Narrative, with analysis of the "action of time", in and through the fact of the narrative-i.e. the action of time in Aristotles depiction of plot in the Poetics(Aristotle), in the action of the soul in Augustine's concept of "distentio animi", and in the demonstation of fictive time in Proust and Woolf, etc..

Wouldn't then works such as this be considered contributions to a genre that could be called Embodied Realistic, such as Ed Casey 'Remembering', Lyotard's 'Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime', Derrida's 'Truth in Painting', Susan Buck-Morss' 'The Dialectics of Seeing', and others?

4) The authors mention intellectual debt to John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. To what extent does Embodied Realism owe a debt, or relate, to the basic dictum of Dialectical Materialism "Material forces determine consciousness, and vice versa"? Clearly Marx analysis of labor (working), and the depiction of commodities as embodied labor speak directly to consciousness determining material forces, thus working in the world.


5) Cogito Ergo sum- This view of embodied realism easily extends to a critique of the "subjective turn" of Descartes. Descartes' reduction to the certainty of doubt- that I can doubt sensation and doubt thinking, but in this doubting I cannot doubt that I doubt- isn't this simply limiting, and the corresponding formula "Cogito Ergo sum" taken too literally ever since?

For can't the same reduction be applied to seeing and feeling? As doubt is simultaneously the feeling of uncertainty. I can doubt the accuracy of what I see, of what it means, but I cannot doubt that I do see, and feel, etc. That while I see and feel, I cannot doubt that I am.

As certain as my toe hurts, I exist, as certain as I see, I exist. It appears that Descartes made a mistake in the formulation of the reduction.

6) Metaphorical proposition testing as method. The Method employed in Philosophy in the Flesh, of metaphorical proposition effectiveness testing is nothing new, and has a long history of results in advertising effectiveness, direct marketing, political polling and focus groups. Being that the method stems historically from these, to claim radical break would be incorrect.

7) Since so much is clearly a part of history, wouldn't a broader survey work, like that in 'Time and Narrative', be more effective for gathering under the umbrella of Embodied Realism, a synthesized understanding of how thinking works in the world? It is clear that a survey of what has already been learned across these contributions would be necessary to formulate a wider understanding of embodied realism.