Description:
Building on a hermeneutic tradition in which accounts of carnal embodiment are overlooked, misunderstood, or underdeveloped, this work initiates a new field of study and concern.
Carnal Hermeneutics provides a philosophical approach to the body as interpretation. Transcending the traditional dualism of rational understanding and embodied sensibility, the volume argues that our most carnal sensations are already interpretations. Because interpretation truly goes "all the way down," carnal hermeneutics rejects the opposition of language to sensibility, word to flesh, text to body. In this volume, an impressive array of today's preeminent philosophers seek to interpret the surplus of meaning that arises from our carnal embodiment, its role in our experience and understanding, and its engagement with the wider world.Brief description: Brian Treanor is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Environmental Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of Aspects of Alterity (Fordham, 2006) and Emplotting Virtue (SUNY Press, 2014), and the coeditor of A Passion for the Possible (Fordham University Press, 2010), Interpreting Nature (Fordham University Press, 2013), and Being-in-Creation (Fordham University Press, 2015). Current projects include the development of an "earthy" hermeneutics, and a monograph on the experience of joy.
Review Quotes: Certain dualities, spirit vs. body, idea vs. sensation, self vs. the world, etc., have long dominated, often injuriously, much Western thinking. In this remarkable volume, the editors, along with some of the most important voices in the Continental tradition, allow hermeneutics to go 'all the way down' and in so doing move beyond these dualities by taking more seriously the 'surplus of meaning arising from our carnal embodiment.' What emerges is a reenergized and radically embodied or 'incarnational' hermeneutics that opens new vistas for religious, environmental, and artistic thinking. This is an important and consequential collection.-----Jason M. Wirth, Seattle University