Check for Understanding

1. Describe the different perspectives on the relationship of the body and mind in the different

periods in history by capturing the main points per historical period?

In Ancient Greek Philosophy according to Plato and Aristotle, man has immortal soul and

perishable body however Plato explained the separate and unchanging being as source of

all living creatures. In Medieval, St Augustine said that man has soul and body merged

into a man’s figure from image and likeness of God. In Modern Period, it explained the

priorities of labor of woman, importance of mind rather than body and functions of the

body: emotions, appetite, and reproduction.

2. What makes Gabriel Marcel and Maurice Merleau-Ponty perspective on the relationship between

the body and mind groundbreaking? Explain.

Everything we have in life; it will detach to us soon. How much we take care ourselves

will be nothing if we left that body. The important thing is that we nurture every bite of

life, experience life as human being, and sooner or later we’ll not regret living our body.

Body is the world of us according to Maurice Merleau-Ponty; clothes to wear are the

ones that will be remove from us but not the world.

3. Can you say that the insight of phenomenologist on our embodied nature is similar to the insight

of ancient Chinese thoughts? How are they similar?

The lived body is a lived center of experience in Husserl's phenomenology of

embodiment, and both its range of motion and its register of sensations are crucial to his

explanation of how we come into contact with other embodied agents. He views lived

embodiment as an integral component of the deep structure of all experience as well as a

means of practical action.

VINCENZO RAZO
2 Year Academic Commissioner
“Da mihi animas coetera tolle”